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Having experienced in excess of 200 fresh titles this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, even knowing numerous stellar titles likely fell under the radar. At this point, it's plan is to except relax, unplug a little, and possibly go for a pleasant stroll in the— ah crap, discovered one more amazing experience. So much for my plans!

A Surprising Front-Runner Appears

With my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of major consequence peril and prize. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can make a dent in your gaming budget.

A Calculated Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I'm familiar with. The premise is that you need to explore a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper to find the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. When you play, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero possessing unique stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of monsters, acquire some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Central System

The method by which you actually clear a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you enter a new floor, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. 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 two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of selecting any given square in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you click on a safer line first and aim for safer moves early? That's the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The procedural hook is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will reduce the probability of hitting a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about manipulating math to the utmost to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• During one attempt, I put all my stat upgrades toward brute force and selected all the teeth possible that would improve my probability of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I developed my adventurer around treasure chests and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I claimed a reward.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to experiment with to let you manipulate the odds according to your strategy.

An Ever-Present Risk

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have an 80% chance to hit the square you want but end up landing a monster that would take out your remaining life. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and choose whether to keep clicking or to proceed to the subsequent stage rather than pushing your luck.

Items like destructive ordnance aid in reducing the chance, just like some special skills. A particular character's unique ability, charged after clearing four squares, enables you to choose a column rather than a horizontal line for that move. By employing this strategically, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has a final update to go before the full version is released. A new character and a new boss are expected to drop sometime in January. The 1.0 release probably isn't far behind, but the game's developers haven't set a specific release window yet.

A Parting Recommendation

Regardless of when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto in your sights. I have been completely engrossed with it, discovering its small details and storing my run rewards per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of persistent upgrades, such as fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll still be attempting that goal when the full version launches. Sign me up for the complete journey.