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Having experienced well over 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially closing the book on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I am at peace with the final results, despite being aware numerous stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. At this point, it's job is to other than unwind, unplug a little, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— ah crap, discovered one more amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my plans!

A Surprising Contender Emerges

With my casual gaming time, usually reserved for a selection of unusual games, I've encountered what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of high stakes peril and prize. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you relish discovering a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your indie credit card.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The concept is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, progressing deeper and deeper in search of the sun, which has vanished from its world. Mechanically, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer with their own attributes and skills, clear floor after floor of monsters, acquire some stat improvements (which are teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Simple enough!

The Novel Core Mechanic

The way you actually clear a area, however. Every time you start another stage, you're shown a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To proceed, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the exact space you land in is a matter of probability.

You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of hitting a particular space in a row.

Then, you'll probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a different row first and attempt some less risky choices early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay at play in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing once you get a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a reward too.

• Crafting a loadout is about manipulating math as best you can to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
• In one run, I focused my attribute improvements toward brute force and picked as many teeth possible that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
• On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies each time I secured loot.

The customization choices are not endless, but it provides ample to experiment with to enable you to influence numbers according to your strategy.

A Constant Tension

Unsurprisingly, it's still a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have a likely outcome to hit the desired tile but end up landing on an enemy that would take out your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you clear a floor out and decide when to continue selecting or when to move on to the following level as opposed to risking it all.

Consumables including enemy-killing bombs aid in reducing the chance, similar to some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, charged after clearing four squares, enables you to select a column instead of a horizontal row during that action. Should you use this strategically, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking level of strategy in the simple act of clicking.

Future Development

Sol Cesto is still in development, and it has another update planned before the full version is launched. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The full launch probably isn't much later, but the game's developers haven't announced a specific release window yet.

A Final Endorsement

Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, discovering its hidden nuances and banking my earned gold per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, such as additional heroes and items I can buy during a run. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I get the feeling I'll still be pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Count me in for the entire experience.