I Think My First Top Pick of 2026.
Having experienced more than 200 recent games this year, I'm formally closing the book on 2025. My annual roundup is live, and I'm satisfied with the ultimate rankings, despite being aware numerous excellent games probably slipped through the cracks. Now, there's job is to but sit back, unplug a little, and possibly go for a pleasant stroll in the— oh no, discovered one more brilliant title. There go my intentions!
A Premature Favorite Surfaces
In my more off-hours play, often set aside for a handful of quirky titles, I've encountered what could be my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a conventional dungeon crawler into a probability-fueled game of high stakes peril and prize. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride being aware of a game before it's cool, test out Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your indie credit card.
A Strategic Roguelike Twist
Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike that's different from everything I've ever played. The setup is that you must venture into a dungeon, descending floor after floor in search of the sun, which has disappeared from this mythical realm. Mechanically, that makes for some standard crawl progression. Pick a hero who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, acquire some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Straightforward, right!
The Unique Central System
How you truly navigate a dungeon room, though. Each instance you start another stage, you're shown a 4x4 grid of boxes. Each square features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a healing strawberry. To proceed, you simply click on one of the four rows, but the exact space you end up on is up to chance.
You may face a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a one-in-four probability of hitting a specific tile in a row.
Subsequently, your odds shift. So do you go for it, or do you opt on a alternative option first and attempt some more cautious selections early? This is the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire a feel for it.
Manipulating Probability
The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced during an attempt by collecting teeth that modify the types of squares you're drawn toward. As an instance, you could acquire a perk that will lower your chances of encountering a trap, but will also decrease the odds of finding a treasure chest too.
- Crafting a loadout is about tweaking the numbers optimally to have a improved likelihood at selecting the optimal square.
- In one run, I put all my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth I could that would boost my chances of landing on monsters aligned with that strength.
- During a separate session, I built my character around loot caches and paired that with a perk that would debuff nearby foes whenever I secured loot.
The strategic possibilities are not endless, but there's enough to engage with to let you manipulate probabilities the way you want.
An Ever-Present Risk
Of course, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the risk that you have a high probability to hit the desired tile but end up landing a foe that would eliminate your final hit point. All selections is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you clear a floor out and choose whether to continue selecting or to advance to the subsequent stage instead of pushing your luck.
Consumables including enemy-killing bombs assist in minimizing the chance, just like some special skills. A particular character's unique ability, activated once making four moves, enables you to select a column instead of a horizontal line on a turn. By employing your cards right, you can reserve that option for the right moment to avoid a risky decision. You'll find an astonishing amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.
The Road to 1.0
Sol Cesto is currently in development, and it has at least one more update scheduled before the complete edition is released. Another playable adventurer and a additional end-level foe are expected to drop by the end of January. The official version may not be far behind, but the game's developers haven't committed to a specific release window yet.
A Parting Recommendation
No matter when the complete game arrives, you might want to put Sol Cesto on your radar. For the past week, I've been completely engrossed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and banking my earned gold every session to reveal a continuous trickle of meta progression rewards, including new characters and items available for acquisition during a run. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I have a sense I will remain pursuing that objective when the full version launches. I'm committed for the long haul.
