🔗 Share this article I'm Convinced My First Favorite Game of 2026. After playing more than 200 recent games this year, It's time to wrapping things up on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I am at peace with the final results, even knowing a host of stellar titles likely fell under the radar. Currently, my only nothing for me to do except relax, unplug a little, and perhaps take a nice walk in the— well, shoot, discovered one more great game. So much for my intentions! An Early Contender Emerges In my more casual gaming time, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered potentially my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual procedural dungeon crawler for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of significant risk risk and reward. Take this as a hipster's insider tip: If you enjoy being aware of a game before it's cool, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your gaming budget. A Strategic Dungeon-Crawling Innovation Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's a departure from all I've ever played. The setup is that you need to explore a dungeon, going down level by level on a quest for the sun, which has disappeared from its world. When you play, that makes for some familiar roguelike structure. Choose an adventurer who has stats and abilities, fight through each level of enemies, collect some permanent upgrades (represented as teeth), and overcome a few area guardians. Easy to grasp! The Distinctive Core Mechanic The way you effectively complete a dungeon room, however. Whenever you enter a new floor, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Every tile either contains a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a health-restoring fruit. To proceed, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the specific tile you select is determined by luck. You might see a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a treasure chest in it. You begin with a quarter likelihood of hitting any given square in a row. After that, the odds shift. The question becomes: Do you take the risk, or do you opt on a alternative option first and aim for safer moves early? That's the push-your-luck gameplay on display in Sol Cesto, and it's captivating after you develop its rhythm. Shaping the Odds The meta-layer is that your percentages can be shaped through a run by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're more attracted to. For example, you might get a perk that will lower your chances of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of landing on a reward too. Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a better shot at getting your desired outcome. During one attempt, I focused my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth possible that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters with that damage type. On a different attempt, I built my character around loot caches and coupled it with a perk that would debuff nearby foes every time I claimed a reward. The customization choices are not endless, but they are sufficient to experiment with to allow you to tweak probabilities the way you want. A Constant Tension Naturally, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have an 80% chance to land on the desired tile but ultimately choose a monster that would eliminate your last bit of health. Every move is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you navigate a level and choose whether to continue selecting or to proceed to the subsequent stage instead of risking it all. Items like explosive devices assist in minimizing the chance, as do some special skills. One hero's signature move, powered up by selecting four tiles, enables you to choose a vertical line in place of a row for that move. If you play your cards right, you can save that move for the right moment to circumvent a perilous selection. You'll find an astonishing degree of depth in the simple act of clicking. The Road to 1.0 Sol Cesto is remaining in development, and it has another update scheduled until the full version is launched. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The full launch probably isn't much later, but the studio haven't set a specific release window yet. A Parting Recommendation Whenever it's fully released, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I have been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency per attempt to reveal a continuous trickle of permanent unlocks, such as additional heroes and items available for acquisition while playing. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I suspect I'll continue pursuing that objective when the full version launches. Count me in for the complete journey.