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After playing more than 200 new releases this year, I'm formally turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is published, and I am at peace with the final results, despite being aware a host of fantastic releases may have dropped under the radar. Now, there's nothing for me to do but sit back, unplug a little, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— ah crap, found another great game. There go my intentions!

A Premature Contender Emerges

With 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 a peculiar procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've ever played. The concept is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has vanished from the fantasy world. When you play, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer with their own stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of monsters, collect some passive buffs (which are teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!

The Unique Gameplay Loop

How you truly navigate a dungeon room, though. Each instance you begin a fresh level, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces holds a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To proceed, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you select is determined by luck.

You could encounter a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You begin with a one-in-four probability of hitting a particular space in a row.

After that, the probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you click on a safer line first and try to make less risky choices early? Herein lies the tension between chance and safety on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating when you acquire a feel for it.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your probabilities can be influenced over the course of a session by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. As an instance, you may obtain a perk that will lower your chances of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of finding a treasure chest too.

• Crafting a loadout is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a better shot at landing where you want.
• On a particular session, I focused my power boosts toward melee prowess and chose every teeth I could that would increase my odds of attracting me toward monsters aligned with that strength.
• In another run, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I secured loot.

The build options are somewhat constrained, but there's enough to experiment with to allow you to tweak the odds to your preference.

A Persistent Risk

Of course, it remains a game of chance. There remains the risk that you have an 80% chance to land on the desired tile but end up landing a foe that would take out your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and choose whether to keep clicking or when to move on to the following level instead of pushing your luck.

Consumables including explosive devices help cut down the chance, just like some character abilities. An adventurer's special power, charged after selecting four tiles, enables you to select a vertical line instead of a row for that move. Should you use this strategically, you can hold that ability for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is remaining in its preview phase, and it has another update to go until the final game is released. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are planned for release before the conclusion of January. The full launch may not be long after, but the game's developers haven't set a final date yet.

A Parting Thought

No matter when it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of little secrets and storing my run rewards in each run to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, including fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition while playing. As of now, I am yet to completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll continue attempting that goal when the full version launches. Count me in for the long haul.