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Following my time with well over 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My best-of compilation is live, and I'm satisfied with the final results, accepting that plenty of fantastic releases may have dropped under the radar. At this point, it's job is to except relax, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, found another great game. So much for my intentions!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

During my casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a few oddball curiosities, I've come across potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a classic dungeon crawler into a chance-driven game of high stakes risk and reward. Take this as a preview for the in-the-know: If you relish discovering a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.

A Strategic Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's a departure from all I've ever played. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. When you play, this creates some standard crawl progression. Select a character with their own stats and abilities, defeat enemies on every stage of enemies, collect some stat improvements (represented as teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Novel Central System

The method by which you truly navigate a area, though. Whenever you start another stage, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To proceed, you just select on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of landing on a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll chances are recalculated. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you choose on a alternative option first and attempt some more cautious selections early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop an understanding of it.

Shaping the Odds

The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by collecting teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you may obtain a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Developing a strategy is about manipulating math to the utmost to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• In one run, I put all my attribute improvements toward brute force and picked as many teeth possible that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are somewhat constrained, but it provides ample to engage with to enable you to influence probabilities the way you want.

An Ever-Present Gamble

Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have a likely outcome to land on the desired tile but ultimately choose a foe that would deplete your final hit point. Each click is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and choose whether to keep clicking or to proceed to the subsequent stage rather than risking it all.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, just like some special skills. A particular character's signature move, powered up by selecting four tiles, allows players to choose a vertical line rather than a horizontal row during that action. If you play this move wisely, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has at least one more update scheduled until the full version is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are planned for release by the end of January. The 1.0 release probably isn't much later, but the game's developers haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Parting Thought

Whenever the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, finding all of small details and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to unlock a steady stream of persistent upgrades, featuring fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I suspect I will remain pursuing that objective when the official release drops. I'm committed for the complete journey.