Sol Cesto turns the purity of math into an almost perfect dungeon crawler

It is often said that mathematics is the purest form of science. It is a field built on deductive reasoning based less on observation and more on understanding fundamental logical truths. The universe, math says, is a numbers game. Roguelite dungeon crawler Sol Cesto (from development trio Tambouille, Géraud Zucchini, and Chariospirale) is a microcosm of the universe ruled by simple statistics. Sol Cesto‘s universe depicts each dungeon floor as a 4×4 grid populated by enemies, items, and traps. Choosing a row plops your character on a random tile; five tiles must be cleared to progress to the next floor. Understanding—and manipulating—the odds of where you land is the fundamental loop. Through the use of items and unlockable upgrades the chance of landing on traps can be lessened and the chance of landing on chests increased. You may never be 100% sure you’ll avoid a trap, but the statistics can be extremely in your favor when a run goes just right. Sol Cesto expertly sharpens gaming’s love of stats and “numbers go up” mentality (just see any Soulslike) into a needle point. If mathematics is scientific purity, then Sol Cesto is gaming purity. [Willa Rowe]

Big Hops

Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Switch

Big Hops introduces a sure-fire first-ballot entry into the Video Game Tongue Hall of Fame. Hop, its young frog hero, uses it as a single tool to solve all problems—a Swiss army knife that lives inside his mouth. He whips that tongue out when he needs to grab an item, swing across a chasm, snatch some fruit, or even unlock doors. And he does it all in a tightly designed 3D platformer that nails the most important thing in this kind of game: It feels great just moving around in it, with Hops’ snappy hopping and parkour-style motion reasons to play on their own. Add in the various wrinkles introduced by the game’s fruit—each color adds another twist, whether it’s a trampoline or a temporary bridge—and you’ve got a bright, colorful, charming platformer with surprisingly deep action. Who knew 2026 would be the year of cool frog platformers? [Garrett Martin]

Pragmata

Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S

So far this year, Capcom seems dead-set on making it seem like the death of AAA games has been greatly exaggerated. After a new Monster Hunter Stories and Resident Evil 9, the publisher just released Pragmata, a third-person action game that has many 30-year-olds nostalgic about a seemingly bygone era when big-budget games were tightly focused single-player experiences and not live-service moneypits. Set on a lunar base where everything has gone south due to an irresponsible tech company, the engineer Hugh has to team up with the child android Diana to battle a bunch of killer robots. While there are some surprisingly well-considered subversions to “sad dad” tropes, much of the appeal here is in smashing AI as you simultaneously juggle gunplay and a persistent hacking minigame. These bots are nigh unstoppable unless Diana taps into their software, which is represented by maneuvering a cursor across a grid with the face buttons. The clever trick is that all of this is real-time, meaning that while your right thumb is tapping away to solve a puzzle, the rest of your fingers are controlling Hugh as he dodges and shoots, creating the sense that you’re playing two characters as once. Instead of proving overwhelming, it turns the game into an ambidextrous balancing act. To help in these scuffles, Hugh needs to find guns. Lots of guns. Some are offensive-focused snipers, while others set stasis traps that give time to crack their defenses, and when paired with a growing number of upgrades that bolster the effects of Diana’s hacking (one causes enemies to short-circuit, while another gives an AOE effect that spreads these effects to nearby bots), there’s a playbox feel in how you go about dismantling these thinking machines. Given that nightmarish tech companies and AI nonsense have encroached on every aspect of daily life, it’s the perfect time to blast away bots with a futuristic shotgun. [Elijah Gonzalez]

But enough about what we’re playing; what are you playing?