I’m looking for HD sprite collections that contain the word “computer”.
I noticed that if I first browse through game assets (https://itch.io/game-assets) and possibly some tags like 2D (https://itch.io/game-assets/tag-2d) then there is no text field to search text on top of this.
Instead you must search via the top text field with is a global search field and will reset the category and tags: https://itch.io/search?q=computer
So at this point you need to select tags again, but the interface is different: you must select from a list of tags. But the list of tags seems very narrow, they are probably just the most used ones, and not all of them. There is no text input field to start typing the name of the tag as in category/tag search.
You must click on “All tags” to see all tags (https://itch.io/tags) but then you really see ALL the tags and it completely forgets your previous search.
Category is easier: you just have to click on the corresponding tab, e.g. Game assets (https://itch.io/search?q=computer&type=games&classification=assets). But it would have been even better if you could select category, then search text and it would remember the category.
To summarize, it would be better to have a more consistent, uniform interface, a bit like Steam maybe:
- a search field common to all types of searches, and that is remembered
- a single option radio for category (well, why not multiple option checkboxes if people look for multiple things at the same time, but I admit it’s more rare to look for games, game assets and soundtracks at the same time)
- multiple option checkboxes for tags (possibly with an OR / AND mode option depending on whether user wants to combines tags or search multiple tags, but I suspect AND is more common)
And user could input either of those in any order, with a consistent interface (the one from browsing page https://itch.io/games + a proper text search field inside the content rather than at the top would be a good start).