🔗 Share this article I Think I Already Have Favorite Game of 2026. Having experienced in excess of 200 fresh titles this year, I am officially turning the page on 2025. My year-end list is out in the world, and I feel content with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware a host of fantastic releases likely fell through the cracks. Currently, my only plan is to except relax, unplug a little, and possibly go for a pleasant stroll in the— oh no, found another amazing experience. There go my plans! A Premature Favorite Surfaces In my more laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what might become my earliest beloved game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of high stakes risk and reward. View this a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's popular, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card. A Tactical Dungeon-Crawling Innovation 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 disappeared from its world. In practice, this results in some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero who has attributes and skills, defeat enemies on every stage of monsters, collect some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and overcome a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp! The Distinctive Gameplay Loop The method by which you actually clear a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you start another stage, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. All spaces features a monster, a treasure chest, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To proceed, you choose on one of the four rows, but the exact space you end up on is up to chance. You could encounter a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a 25% chance of hitting any given square in a row. Then, you'll odds shift. So do you press your luck, or do you choose on a safer line first and attempt some less risky choices early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop a feel for it. Manipulating Probability The roguelike twist is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by picking up teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will concurrently lower the odds of landing on a reward too. Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers to the utmost to have a higher chance at getting your desired outcome. During one attempt, I put all my attribute improvements toward brute force and selected all the teeth I could that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters of that variety. On a different attempt, I built my character around loot caches and combined that with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters each time I claimed a reward. The customization choices are limited, but it provides ample to work with to let you manipulate numbers according to your strategy. An Ever-Present Tension Of course, it's still a game of chance. There's always the risk that you have a high probability to select the square you want but wind up hitting a monster 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 decide when to keep clicking or to advance to the next floor rather than testing fate. Consumables including enemy-killing bombs help cut down the chance, as do some character abilities. An adventurer's signature move, activated once clearing four squares, enables you to click on a vertical column instead of a row for that move. Should you use your cards right, you can reserve that option for an optimal time to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking. Looking Ahead Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has at least one more update to go until the full version is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are expected to drop by the end of January. The full launch may not be long after, but the studio haven't committed to a final date yet. A Final Thought No matter when it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and banking my earned gold in each run to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, featuring additional heroes and items I can buy while playing. As of now, I am yet to found the deepest level, and I get the feeling I'll continue working on that task when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the long haul.