what even is that?
Thank you. That is the best evidence that the recommendation section is well hidden and people do not even know it.
Click your user name. Between My Library and Game Jams.
Or click your Library. Below My Purchases and above Things on sale.
Also the itch.io landing page is forgotton after creating an account. Happened to me. Go to itch.io directly. Not to the browse section. If you go to the browse section you already are in the part of itch that is not customized to you. On itch.io if logged in, if you scroll down a bit, there is a tiny recommended section.
I want open-ended exploration
You can't use standard browse section for that. The landing and most other sections on that are ranked by popularity. And the recent is dangerous (malware) and lots of half developed games.
A few suggestions.
Go to global feed. https://itch.io/feed
Scroll the itch.io landing all the way down. There is the https://itch.io/randomizer
And of course the landing itself, there are featured games - not tailored to you by an algorithm. Those are hand picked.
Use the browse section with tags to your liking. After you selected a few non-horror tags, it should thin out. You can select any tag you like by writing it in the little tag box. The search box only searches titles, not tags (and it only suggests tags that are in the suggested tag list). If you can think of it as a tag, chances are, someone has tagged it.
There is also the devlogs https://itch.io/devlogs