I Think My First Top Pick of 2026.
After playing in excess of 200 new releases this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, accepting that numerous stellar titles probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's plan is to but sit back, unplug a little, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— ah crap, discovered one more brilliant title. There go my plans!
A Surprising Favorite Surfaces
In my more casual gaming time, usually reserved for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered potentially my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a conventional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of major consequence danger and payoff. View this a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it's popular, test out Sol Cesto so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget.
A Strategic Dungeon-Crawling Innovation
Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The setup is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has gone missing from the fantasy world. Mechanically, this results in some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero possessing unique attributes and skills, fight through each level of foes, collect some permanent upgrades (which are teeth), and defeat a few biome bosses. Straightforward, right!
The Unique Gameplay Loop
The way you truly navigate a area, though. Every time you enter a new floor, you see a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Every tile holds a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but the specific tile you select 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 quarter likelihood of hitting any given square in a row.
Then, you'll odds shift. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you click on a alternative option first and aim for more cautious selections early? This is the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing once you get a feel for it.
Influencing Chance
The procedural hook is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by gathering teeth that change what things you're more attracted to. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a treasure chest too.
- Developing a strategy is about manipulating math optimally to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
- On a particular session, I focused my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and picked as many teeth I could that would improve my probability of landing on monsters of that variety.
- During a separate session, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters whenever I secured loot.
The customization choices are not endless, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate numbers according to your strategy.
A Constant Risk
Naturally, it remains a game of chance. There remains the possibility that you have a likely outcome to select the square you want but wind up hitting a foe that would deplete your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you navigate a level and choose whether to keep clicking or to advance to the following level rather than testing fate.
Consumables including enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, just like some hero powers. An adventurer's special power, powered up by making four moves, allows players to select a vertical column instead of a horizontal row on a turn. Should you use this move wisely, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. You'll find an astonishing level of strategy in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.
Looking Ahead
Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has a final update scheduled until the complete edition is launched. An additional hero and a fresh guardian are expected to drop by the end of January. The 1.0 release probably isn't far behind, but the game's developers haven't committed to a specific release window yet.
A Final Endorsement
No matter when it's fully released, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. For the past week, I've been thoroughly captivated with it, uncovering each of little secrets and banking my earned gold every session to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, featuring new characters and items purchasable during a run. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I suspect I will remain working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the long haul.
