I'm Convinced I Already Have Top Pick of 2026.
Following my time with in excess of 200 new releases this year, I'm formally 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 numerous excellent games probably slipped under the radar. At this point, it's nothing for me to do except relax, unplug a little, and perhaps take a pleasant stroll in the— oh no, found another amazing experience. And just like that, goodbye to my intentions!
A Surprising Front-Runner Appears
During my off-hours play, usually reserved for a handful of quirky titles, I've come across what might become my initial top game of 2026. Sol Cesto is an unusual roguelike for Windows PC that reimagines a conventional dungeon crawler into a luck-based game of major consequence peril and prize. Consider this a preview for the in-the-know: If you take pride discovering a game before it hits the mainstream, sample Sol Cesto so you can burn a spot in your gaming budget.
A Calculated Roguelike Twist
Sol Cesto is a thought-provoking procedural game that's different from everything I'm familiar with. The premise is that you are tasked with descending into a dungeon, descending floor after floor to find the sun, which has disappeared from its world. Mechanically, that makes for some recognizable genre framework. Pick a hero with their own stats and abilities, clear floor after floor of foes, collect some passive buffs (represented as teeth), and vanquish a few biome bosses. Easy to grasp!
The Distinctive Central System
How you truly navigate a dungeon room, however. Every time you start another stage, you see a four-by-four matrix 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 a matter of probability.
You might see a row with two monsters, a strawberry, and a reward box in it. You initially will have a quarter likelihood of selecting a specific tile in a row.
Subsequently, your odds shift. The question becomes: Do you go for it, or do you click on a safer line first and aim for safer moves early? Herein lies the push-your-luck gameplay in action in Sol Cesto, and it's absorbing when you acquire its rhythm.
Influencing Chance
The roguelike twist is that your probabilities can be influenced through a run by collecting teeth that alter which objects you're more likely to land on. To illustrate, you could acquire a perk that will reduce the probability of landing on a trap, but will similarly reduce the odds of landing on a treasure chest too.
- Developing a strategy is about tweaking the numbers as best you can to have a improved likelihood at landing where you want.
- During one attempt, I invested my power boosts toward physical attack/defense and chose every teeth I could that would boost my chances of attracting me toward monsters of that variety.
- During a separate session, I built my character around reward boxes and coupled it with a perk that would reduce the power of surrounding monsters every time I claimed a reward.
The strategic possibilities are limited, but it provides ample to engage with to let you manipulate the odds the way you want.
A Persistent Tension
Unsurprisingly, it remains a game of chance. You constantly face the chance that you have a high probability to select the square you want but end up landing a foe that would take out your last bit of health. All selections is a gamble, so there's a constant tension as you work through a stage and decide when to keep clicking or when to move on to the subsequent stage instead of testing fate.
Consumables including destructive ordnance assist in minimizing the chance, similar to some character abilities. One hero's signature move, activated once clearing four squares, lets gamers to click on a vertical line rather than a row during that action. If you play this move wisely, you can hold that ability for a crucial point to circumvent a perilous selection. It's a surprising amount of nuance in the simple act of clicking.
The Road to 1.0
Sol Cesto is currently in its preview phase, and it has another update to go until the full version is released. Another playable adventurer and a new boss are expected to drop before the conclusion of January. The 1.0 release probably isn't far behind, but the game's developers haven't announced a final date yet.
A Parting Recommendation
Whenever the complete game arrives, you ought to put Sol Cesto on your wishlist. I've been positively obsessed with it, uncovering each of little secrets and saving my accumulated currency in each run to unlock a steady stream of meta progression rewards, featuring additional heroes and items available for acquisition mid-attempt. To this day, I have not reached the bottom, and I get the feeling I will remain pursuing that objective when 1.0 finally hits. Sign me up for the long haul.
