I Believe My First Favorite Game of 2026.
Following my time with in excess of 200 new releases this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My best-of compilation is out in the world, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware plenty of stellar titles may have dropped through the cracks. Currently, my only plan is to but sit back, disconnect briefly, and maybe enjoy a nice walk in the— ah crap, stumbled upon a great game. So much for my peaceful respite!
An Early Favorite Surfaces
During my laid-back sessions, often set aside for a selection of unusual games, I've discovered what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that deconstructs a traditional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of major consequence risk and reward. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you take pride in knowing about a game before it's cool, sample Sol Cesto so you can make a dent in your wallet for unique titles.
A Calculated Genre Subversion
Sol Cesto is a strategy-focused dungeon crawler that's different from everything I've previously experienced. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, going down level by level to find the sun, which has gone missing from this mythical realm. In practice, this results in some standard crawl progression. Select a character who has parameters and powers, clear floor after floor of foes, pick up some passive buffs (in the form of teeth), and vanquish a few stage-ending champions. Straightforward, right!
The Unique Gameplay Loop
The way you effectively complete a dungeon room, though. Whenever you enter a new floor, the game presents a four-by-four matrix of boxes. Each square features a monster, a loot box, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To explore a room, you simply click on one of the four rows, but which square you select is up to chance.
You could encounter a row with multiple foes, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You start with a 25% chance of landing on a particular space in a row.
After that, the probabilities change. So do you press your luck, or do you click on a different row first and aim for more cautious selections early? This is the risk-reward dynamic in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire a feel for it.
Influencing Chance
The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're drawn toward. To illustrate, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a reward too.
- Developing a strategy is about influencing the statistics optimally to have a better shot at selecting the optimal square.
- During one attempt, I invested my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and selected all the teeth I could that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters with that damage type.
- In another run, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I opened a chest.
The build options are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to engage with to let you manipulate the odds according to your strategy.
A Persistent Tension
Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. There's always the chance that you have an 80% chance to hit the preferred space but wind up hitting a foe that would take out your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so you feel ongoing pressure as you navigate a level and determine if to keep clicking or to proceed to the next floor as opposed to risking it all.
Items like explosive devices help cut down the chance, just like some special skills. One hero's signature move, activated once making four moves, allows players to click on a column instead of a horizontal row during that action. If you play this move wisely, you can hold that ability for an optimal time to sidestep a dangerous choice. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the basic action of clicking.
Looking Ahead
Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has at least one more update planned until the complete edition is launched. A new character and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be far behind, but the game's developers haven't set a final date yet.
A Parting Recommendation
Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you should consider put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been completely engrossed with it, finding all of small details and saving my accumulated currency every session to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, featuring fresh adventurers and items purchasable while playing. I still haven't found the deepest level, and I have a sense I'll continue working on that task when the official release drops. I'm committed for the complete journey.
