I Think I Already Have Must-Play Title of 2026.

Following my time with well over 200 recent games this year, I'm formally wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is out in the world, and I am at peace with the final results, accepting that a host of excellent games likely fell under the radar. Now, there's plan is to but sit back, take a short break, and possibly go for a nice walk in the— ah crap, discovered one more amazing experience. There go my peaceful respite!

A Surprising Favorite Surfaces

With my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a few oddball curiosities, I've encountered potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional labyrinth explorer into a probability-fueled game of significant risk risk and reward. Consider this an early adopter's heads-up: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it hits the mainstream, give Sol Cesto a try so you can burn a spot in your wallet for unique titles.

A Tactical Genre Subversion

Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's unlike anything I'm familiar with. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has disappeared from its world. Mechanically, this results in some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer with their own parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of enemies, pick up some permanent upgrades (in the form of teeth), and defeat a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!

The Unique Gameplay Loop

How you truly navigate a dungeon room, is unique. Every time you enter a new floor, you see 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 choose on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you select is a matter of probability.

You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of selecting a specific tile in a row.

Subsequently, your probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you opt on a alternative option first and aim for safer moves early? Herein lies the risk-reward dynamic at play in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating once you get its rhythm.

Influencing Chance

The meta-layer is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a treasure chest too.

• Creating a build is about influencing the statistics as best you can to have a improved likelihood at landing where you want.
• On a particular session, I invested my power boosts toward melee prowess and picked as many teeth I could that would improve my probability of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type.
• In another run, I built my character around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I opened a chest.

The strategic possibilities are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to engage with to allow you to tweak numbers the way you want.

An Ever-Present Tension

Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have an 80% chance to select the preferred space but wind up hitting a monster that would deplete your remaining life. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you work through a stage and determine if to press onward or to proceed to the following level as opposed to testing fate.

Tools such as enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, as do some character abilities. A particular character's unique ability, charged after making four moves, enables you to choose a vertical column in place of a horizontal line on a turn. Should you use your cards right, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking level of strategy in the basic action of clicking.

Looking Ahead

Sol Cesto is currently in early access, and it has a final update to go until the final game is released. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The official version likely won't be far behind, but the creators haven't committed to a concrete launch day yet.

A Final Thought

No matter when the complete game arrives, you should consider put Sol Cesto in your sights. For the past week, I've been positively obsessed with it, finding all of hidden nuances and banking my earned gold per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, such as new characters and items available for acquisition while playing. I still haven't completed the dungeon, and I get the feeling I will remain pursuing that objective when the full version launches. I'm committed for the complete journey.