Sorting IFDB Games

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Is there a way to browse just choice-based games and exclude parser games on IFDB?

I see the tag system, but there aren’t many games that are categorized properly, it seems… https://ifdb.org/search?searchfor=tag%3Achoice-based

Is there a better term to use or maybe exclude? (Can I exclude tags or keywords from an IFDB search?) Any help is appreciated.

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Aside from the tag system, probably the best you can do is use the advanced search to include or exclude particular authoring systems. For example, you can include Twine, exclude Inform, and so on. IFDB doesn’t have a built-in field for parser or choice.

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You can also use the advanced search to exclude a certain tag (like parser). But you will still find some parsers in the results, since not all parsers are tagged with it.

Plenty of games do not have tags…

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Is it possible to search for multiple tags at once and maybe with an OR operator? Like, Can I search for games tagged with “twine” or “choicescript” and get both results together? How would I type that into the search field?

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I hope there can one day be a better way but for now I just do

-system:Inform -system:TADS -tag:infocom -system:dialog

and that catches most of them. If I’m getting a lot of quest, adrift, or hugo games I exclude them, too. If you’re trying to count all choice-based games then you’re probably in trouble because there are so many parser systems, but doing published:2011- would exclude all retro games like The Quill, while including most of the earliest Choice-based games (like The Play in 2011).

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Brilliant. Thank you so much!

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