Anyone else unhappy with the method of finding what to play?

[Zed (Zed Lopez)]

@JoshGrams

What sort of search filters are you thinking of that IFDB doesn’t already have? You can search, it has user-created tags, lists, polls… so you could look at games tagged heist or cephalopod, see thecanvasrose’s favorite horror games or Tabitha’s favorite surreal games or check out any of Mathbrush’s 28 lists on various topics, etc.

Yeah, it’s not the most obvious thing in the world for a newcomer to find, but IFDB is hard to beat, and Mathbrush’s lists would be the first thing I’d point people toward. One can also search IFDB for lists, e.g., lists for “beginner”.

One can also search for tags, e.g., tags containing “xyzzy” to see tags related to the XYZZY Awards, like

• XYZZY Best Game
• XYZZY Best Writing
• XYZZY Best Use of Medium

One can likewise look at IF Comp Winners or Golden Banana of Discord winners.

In the IF Reviews and Essays category here, @mathbrush (that guy again) has produced some fantastic overviews:

• the Author Highlights series has overviews of the oeuvres of some of IF’s most notable authors
• the History of IF Comp series doesn’t just discuss each IF Comp: it provides context regarding what else was going on in the IF world that year and mentions other prominent games released in the year.