My favorite parts of personal top 10 lists are the games in the 6-10 slots. With the way games work there are always a handful of "default" picks in 1-5 (this year would be things like Baldur's Gate, Alan Wake, TOTK) and while those games are great I've already played them.
So what are your top 10 rarities?
Mine are:
Pikmin 4
I've always loved Pikmin, but this one feels like the full realization of the promise of the first game. A bunch of little dudes in a perilous environment with cool doodads to find and familiar areas to explore. I think the game dives a little too far into checklist-y design for my liking, but I had a great time with it.
Against the Storm
Sort of cheating because it's been Early Access for a while, but it hit 1.0 this month so it counts. I didn't think I'd like City Builder-but-Roguelike as much as I did, but AtS hits it super hard. By trimming away the late game city optimization, AtS means that you're constantly in that dangerous early game where you're trying desperately to cobble together a hamlet that can sustain itself while the environment is constantly trying to push you out. It's my favorite part of city builders and then as soon as you leave that phase you start over in a new location. It's real sublime shit, I tell you.
Paranormasight
I've seen this on a few Good Taste Haves' lists, but Paranormasight is a real strong contender for top tier Visual Novel. Shockingly the folks at Square Enix decided to keep their group of skunkworks VN devs going with a hyperlocal VN about a bunch of weirdos interacting with local folklore. There's a bunch of creepy writing and design choices in here that makes it more supernatural thriller than outright horror which was a welcome surprise for me, but the real win is how inventive the team got with Mechanics. No I won't say more because spoilers.
Anyway yeah, tell me what I should be playing while I'm away on holidays.