( x ) Show content marked as adult in search & browse
That is a settings option. Ok. But this does not help you find adult content, if you search for it.
There are more than a dozen tags that can indicate adult content, but not necessarily. What tags means is in the eye of the beholder. What is erotic for one and appropriate for even 12 yo might be outright forbidden in other countries. What is important though, is the marked as adult option in the games meta data. The thing you get problems with itch if you do not mark your game with, if it would need that marking.
Also, adult is not only the lovely kind, but also some of the horror kind. I would tag a horror gore game with horror and gore, but not with adult, even though it should be marked as not for kids. As this is what the adult marking actually means: it is not for minors. for whatever reason.
Right now the situation is this: you can properly mark a game as adult, but if you do not also tag it adult, you cannot be found by tag search.
Furthermore, what adult tag should you even use? adult? 18? nsfw? sex? erotic? eroge? lewd ? porn? hentai? xxx? mature? nudity? sexual-content?
Tag spamming is discouraged. But there is no one adult tag that encompasses the marked as adult option.
The marking kinda works for negative filtering. But negative search is not a priority for itch, as the exlusion of tags problematic demonstrates. So policy wise, there should be a positive filtering for adult content.
But there is none. You can only allow it to be show up in search and browse, but not search or browse specifically for it. I do not want to discuss individual games, but there are games that are properly marked as adult content, but lack the searchable tags for it. So you have the mind boggling situation that you actually cannot find those games if you do browse adult as a tag.
Also, adult games have the problem of actually needing to reserve several of their limited tags to be able to be found via tag search. So you will see games that are redundantly marked as adult and also tagged with several of the adult tags mentioned above. Reducing the available tags to describe the game.
A tag like eroge at least has information, but most of those adult tags are redundant with the marked as adult.
Since the option in setting is named "show marked as adult" I would make adult not a selectable tag, but make it a mandatory tag that gets added, if you mark it as adult. This way you could be sure, that all games that are marked as adult, are also tagged adult. Or make it a virtual tag, that is searchable but does not need tagging, only marking.