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Having experienced in excess of 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 numerous excellent games probably slipped under the radar. Now, there's job is to except relax, disconnect briefly, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— well, shoot, found another great game. So much for my plans!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

With my casual gaming time, typically earmarked for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of significant risk risk and reward. View this a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy in knowing about a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Strategic Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I've ever played. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has vanished from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero possessing unique attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few stage-ending champions. Simple enough!

The Unique Core Mechanic

The method by which you actually clear a chamber, though. Each instance you enter a new floor, the game presents a 4x4 grid of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the exact space you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of landing on any given square in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. So do you press your luck, or do you choose on a different row first and try to make safer moves early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire an understanding of it.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by picking up teeth that change what things you're drawn toward. For example, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of encountering a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome.
• During one attempt, I focused my stat upgrades toward melee prowess and selected all the teeth possible that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I built my character around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I secured loot.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to work with to let you manipulate probabilities the way you want.

A Constant Risk

Naturally, it's still a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have a likely outcome to select the desired tile but ultimately choose a foe that would eliminate your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and decide when to press onward or to advance to the following level as opposed to risking it all.

Consumables including destructive ordnance help cut down the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's unique ability, charged after clearing four squares, allows players to select a vertical line in place of a horizontal row on a turn. If you play your cards right, you can hold that ability for the right moment to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the basic action of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has a final update to go before the full version is released. An additional hero and a new boss are planned for release sometime in January. The full launch likely won't be long after, but the creators haven't set a final date yet.

A Parting Endorsement

No matter when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and storing my run rewards in each run to access a constant flow of permanent unlocks, including additional heroes and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I'll continue attempting that goal when the official release drops. I'm committed for the long haul.