🔗 Share this article I Think I Already Have Top Pick of 2026. Having experienced well over 200 new releases this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is live, and I am at peace with the ultimate rankings, even knowing a host of fantastic releases probably slipped under the radar. Now, there's nothing for me to do except relax, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a great game. There go my peaceful respite! An Early Front-Runner Appears With my laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of significant risk danger and payoff. View this a hipster's insider tip: If you relish being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your indie credit card. A Calculated Roguelike Twist Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I've ever played. The premise is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level in search of the sun, which has vanished from its world. In practice, this creates some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of enemies, collect some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Straightforward, right! The Distinctive Gameplay Loop The way you effectively complete a dungeon room, though. Each instance you begin a fresh level, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you select is up to chance. You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a 25% chance of landing on a specific tile in a row. After that, the odds shift. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you click on a different row first and aim for safer moves early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing when you acquire an understanding of it. Influencing Chance The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of encountering a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too. Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome. In one run, I invested my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth I could that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type. In another run, I constructed my hero around reward boxes and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I opened a chest. The strategic possibilities are limited, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate the odds according to your strategy. An Ever-Present Gamble Naturally, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the possibility that you have a likely outcome to land on the desired tile but ultimately choose on an enemy that would take out your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and decide when to press onward or to proceed to the following level rather than risking it all. Tools such as destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, just like some special skills. An adventurer's special power, activated once selecting four tiles, lets gamers to select a column rather than a horizontal row during that action. Should you use your cards right, you can save that move for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking level of strategy in the simple act of clicking. Future Development Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has a final update planned before the full version is launched. An additional hero and a new boss are expected to drop by the end of January. The full launch probably isn't long after, but the studio haven't set a concrete launch day yet. A Final Thought Whenever it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its hidden nuances and storing my run rewards every session to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, such as new characters and items I can buy mid-attempt. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I will remain working on that task when the official release drops. Count me in for the entire experience.