🔗 Share this article I Think I Already Have Top Pick of 2026. Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, I am officially wrapping things up on 2025. My year-end list is published, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware plenty of stellar titles likely fell under the radar. Now, there's plan is to except relax, take a short break, and maybe enjoy a refreshing hike in the— well, shoot, discovered one more great game. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions! An Early Favorite Surfaces In my more laid-back sessions, typically earmarked for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what could be my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a distinctive procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a classic dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of major consequence peril and prize. View this an early adopter's heads-up: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your wallet for unique titles. A Calculated Genre Subversion Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's unlike anything I've ever played. The concept is that you need to explore a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has disappeared from the fantasy world. When you play, this creates some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer with their own parameters and powers, fight through each level of enemies, collect some stat improvements (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Easy to grasp! The Distinctive Core Mechanic How you truly navigate a area, though. Each instance you begin a fresh level, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To make a move, you simply click on one of the horizontal lines, but which square you select is determined by luck. You may face a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a 25% chance of hitting any given square in a row. Subsequently, your probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you press your luck, or do you click on a different row first and try to make less risky choices early? This is the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire an understanding of it. Manipulating Probability The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated over the course of a session by picking up teeth that change what things you're more likely to land on. For example, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of hitting a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a reward too. Developing a strategy is about manipulating math optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square. On a particular session, I put all my stat upgrades toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth possible that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters of that variety. On a different attempt, I built my character around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I claimed a reward. The build options are not endless, but it provides ample to engage with to allow you to tweak the odds according to your strategy. An Ever-Present Risk Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There remains the chance that you have an 80% chance to hit the square you want but wind up hitting a monster that would take out your remaining life. Each click is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you navigate a level and decide when to continue selecting or to advance to the subsequent stage rather than pushing your luck. Items like destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, as do some character abilities. A particular character's special power, powered up by selecting four tiles, allows players to click on a vertical column rather than a row on a turn. If you play your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. There's a shocking amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking. The Road to 1.0 Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has at least one more update to go before the complete edition is released. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are expected to drop sometime in January. The full launch likely won't be much later, but the studio haven't set a final date yet. A Parting Endorsement Regardless of when its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your radar. I have been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of small details and saving my accumulated currency in each run to unlock a steady stream of permanent unlocks, such as fresh adventurers and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. To this day, I have not found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll still be pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Count me in for the complete journey.