I even tried to combine tag and search with https://itch.io/games/tag-adult/search?q=cosy+cafe, for instance. I tried a game, liked it, and want to rate it, but finding it again means scrolling way down the adult tag list and hunting. That's poor UX.
Is there some way to search that tag?
From what I understand, Itch has 2 search systems, either by TAG or by name, and it doesn't allow mixing, meaning you can't search for a name that only belongs to tag X.
If you search by name, and the system doesn't return any games with adult content, it's because in your account properties you don't have the option "Show content marked as adult in search & browse" checked.
Try changing that option and searching by name.
PS: searching for "cosy cafe", I find a game developed by the user "cosy-creator", I assume that's the one you're looking for?
Itch has many idiosyncracies.
You are correct, there are two "search" boxes and they display a lot of those oddities.
One searches by literal title (and username) and is capped at about 60 results. The other looks like a dropdown box, but actually is also a box to write in tags - but it does not search them, it just adds it to the url, regardless if there are any items in a tag. The search on the other hand will search tags, but will only display tags, that are in the suggested list, that appears in the drop down box. For instance, https://itch.io/search?type=games&q=programming will not show that there are games using the https://itch.io/games/tag-programming tag. But when search for "adu" (and having the adult content setting active), it will show up the adult tag as existing and a related tag to that word.
And important for this case here, the browse search box ignores the adult setting if you use an adult tag. Or rather the browse system. And those tags are an arbitrary list of tags that are considered adult. They "fixed" the box a while ago to at least hide those tags from the suggestion list in that box according to the setting.
