I'm Convinced I Already Have Favorite Game of 2026.
Having experienced more than 200 new releases this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I feel content with the final results, accepting that a host of fantastic releases likely fell under the radar. At this point, it's nothing for me to do other than unwind, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— well, shoot, found another brilliant title. There go my peaceful respite!
A Premature Contender Emerges
During my casual gaming time, usually reserved for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across what could be my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride discovering a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.
A Tactical Roguelike Twist
Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've ever played. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. When you play, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero possessing unique stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!
The Distinctive Central System
The way you truly navigate a dungeon room, however. Every time 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 life-giving berry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you end up on is determined by luck.
You might see a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of selecting a particular space in a row.
Subsequently, your probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you choose on a safer line first and attempt some more cautious selections early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop an understanding of it.
Manipulating Probability
The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped during an attempt by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of finding a treasure chest too.
- Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome.
- On a particular session, I invested my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth possible that would improve my probability of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
- In another run, I built my character around treasure chests and coupled it with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies every time I secured loot.
The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to experiment with to enable you to influence the odds to your preference.
A Constant Tension
Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have a high probability to hit the preferred space but end up landing on an enemy that would take out your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you work through a stage and determine if to continue selecting or to proceed to the subsequent stage rather than risking it all.
Tools such as destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, similar to some character abilities. An adventurer's unique ability, powered up by selecting four tiles, enables you to click on a vertical column in place of a row during that action. Should you use this strategically, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.
Future Development
Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has at least one more update scheduled until the complete edition is released. A new character and a new boss are expected to drop by the end of January. The full launch probably isn't much later, but the creators haven't announced a concrete launch day yet.
A Concluding Thought
No matter when it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been positively obsessed with it, finding all of small details and banking my earned gold per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of persistent upgrades, including additional heroes and items available for acquisition while playing. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I'll still be attempting that goal when 1.0 finally hits. I'm committed for the complete journey.