the existance of non featured tags is poorly advertised. it is a drop down box that reads select a tag. no hint that you can write in that box. and the box that you are supposed to write in, does not search those non featured tags either.
there are 159 games with tag banana. searching for banana gives me 66 results and also no hint that is is a tag.
the tag search is also broken for non games. https://itch.io/t/2874481/tag-search-has-been-broken-for-ages#post-7835143
A combo box by definition is somewhere you can either type or pick from a list. It's a standard control used in countless apps, on any operating system. You can check if it's possible simply by clicking in the text box. And that's what a featured tag means: one that's suggested as an option.
And yes, the free-form search box looks at titles and short descriptions, not tags. So searching for "banana" will return games that have the word banana in one of those fields, which isn't the same thing.
Bugs are another story.
Whatever a combo box could do, the suggested use is to select a tag, as that is what is written there. Selecting and guessing a tag are two different things to my understanding.
Not even the fact that I can type in that box would hint at tags existing, that are not in the list. It just says filter with. And it does filter the list if you type parts of tags, like orr for horrible and horror.
It goes even further. There is a link to the right below the box that says view all tags. And there is a button on that page that says find tag.
Why does that link not read featured tags instead of all? Also the find button does not find tags. Even if I put banana in it, it will find nothing. It is just the same combo box for the featured tags but with find written in it, instead of select.
That functionality is not poorly advertised, as I wrote. It is implied that is does not exist. I found out by accident, after deducing that it must be possible somehow, because I encountered tags in game descritptions that I could not select in browse.
To go back to topic, hexagon and match-3 are tags that have to be put in exactly to find the game in browse, and they have to be typed in the tag box. The match-3 surprised me. But the game can be found if players click the match-3 tag on one of the other 300+ games that have tagged this. And I guess it helps for related games or recommendations.
