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After playing well over 200 recent games this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is published, and I'm satisfied with the concluding selections, accepting that plenty of fantastic releases may have dropped under the radar. Currently, my only nothing for me to do but sit back, take a short break, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, discovered one more brilliant title. So much for my plans!

An Early Favorite Surfaces

During my off-hours play, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered potentially my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional labyrinth explorer into a chance-driven game of major consequence danger and payoff. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: 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 Dungeon-Crawling Innovation

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's a departure from all I've previously experienced. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper on a quest for the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. In practice, this creates some standard crawl progression. Choose an adventurer with their own stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of enemies, acquire some stat improvements (which are teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Novel Gameplay Loop

The way you truly navigate a area, is unique. Whenever you begin a fresh level, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you choose on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you end up on is determined by luck.

You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You start with a quarter likelihood of landing on any given square in a row.

After that, the odds shift. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you opt on a alternative option first and attempt some less risky choices early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing after you develop its rhythm.

Manipulating Probability

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated during an attempt by gathering teeth that modify the types of squares you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a higher chance at landing where you want.
• In one run, I focused my power boosts toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth I could that would increase my odds of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes each time I claimed a reward.

The customization choices are limited, but it provides ample to experiment with to let you manipulate numbers to your preference.

An Ever-Present Risk

Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. There's always the possibility that you have an 80% chance to land on the square you want but ultimately choose a monster that would take out your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you work through a stage and choose whether to keep clicking or to advance to the subsequent stage rather than testing fate.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, just like some hero powers. One hero's unique ability, charged after making four moves, allows players to click on a column instead of a row during that action. By employing your cards right, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has at least one more update scheduled until the full version is released. An additional hero and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be much later, but the game's developers haven't committed to a final date yet.

A Parting Thought

Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of little secrets and banking my earned gold in each run to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, such as new characters and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I have a sense I'll continue pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the entire experience.