I'm Convinced I Already Have Favorite Game of 2026.
Having experienced more than 200 fresh titles 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, even knowing a host of stellar titles likely fell by the wayside. Currently, my only job is to other than unwind, take a short break, and possibly go for a pleasant stroll in the— well, shoot, stumbled upon a brilliant title. So much for my peaceful respite!
A Surprising Front-Runner Appears
With my laid-back sessions, usually reserved for a selection of unusual games, I've come across what might become my first favorite game of 2026. Sol Cesto is a peculiar roguelike for Windows PC that breaks down a traditional labyrinth explorer into a luck-based game of major consequence danger and payoff. Take this as an early adopter's heads-up: If you enjoy discovering a game before it's popular, give Sol Cesto a try so you can punch a hole in your wallet for unique titles.
A Tactical Genre Subversion
Sol Cesto is a tactical roguelike 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 in search of the sun, which has gone missing from its world. In practice, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Choose an adventurer who has parameters and powers, defeat enemies on every stage of foes, collect some permanent upgrades (which are teeth), and vanquish a few area guardians. Easy to grasp!
The Distinctive Core Mechanic
How you truly navigate a dungeon room, is unique. Whenever you begin a fresh level, the game presents a sixteen-square board of boxes. Each square features a monster, a reward cache, a trap, or a life-giving berry. To explore a room, you just select on one of the horizontal lines, but the exact space you select is up to chance.
You may face a row with a pair of enemies, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of hitting a particular space in a row.
After that, the probabilities change. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you opt on a different row first and try to make less risky choices early? This is the tension between chance and safety in action in Sol Cesto, and it's engrossing after you develop an understanding of it.
Influencing Chance
The procedural hook is that your odds can be manipulated through a run by gathering teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. As an instance, you might get a perk that will decrease your odds of landing on a trap, but will also decrease the odds of getting a treasure chest too.
- Crafting a loadout is about manipulating math optimally to have a higher chance at selecting the optimal square.
- In one run, I invested my power boosts toward brute force and chose every teeth I could that would boost my chances of being drawn to monsters aligned with that strength.
- On a different attempt, I developed my adventurer around reward boxes and paired that with a perk that would weaken adjacent enemies whenever I claimed a reward.
The build options are somewhat constrained, but they are sufficient to experiment with to allow you to tweak numbers according to your strategy.
An Ever-Present Risk
Unsurprisingly, at its heart, it's a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have a high probability to hit the square you want but ultimately choose on an enemy that would deplete your final hit point. Every move is a gamble, so a persistent nervousness exists as you work through a stage and choose whether to continue selecting or to proceed to the following level rather than risking it all.
Items like destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, as do some character abilities. An adventurer's signature move, charged after clearing four squares, enables you to click on a column rather than a horizontal row during that action. Should you use your cards right, you can reserve that option for a crucial point to sidestep a dangerous choice. There's a shocking degree of depth in the seemingly straightforward task of clicking.
The Road to 1.0
Sol Cesto is still in early access, and it has another update to go until the full version is unleashed. Another playable adventurer and a fresh guardian are scheduled to arrive sometime in January. The 1.0 release may not be much later, but the studio haven't committed to a concrete launch day yet.
A Parting Thought
Whenever its 1.0 launch occurs, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been thoroughly captivated with it, finding all of hidden nuances and saving my accumulated currency every session to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, including additional heroes and items purchasable during a run. To this day, I have not completed the dungeon, and I suspect I'll still be pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Count me in for the long haul.
