Nice update, thanks :).

The exclusion is quite hard to notice if you don't know it is there. I actually forgot about it at first and thought at first it was just to pin tags (it does explain at the top of the list when selected and explains on hover). It would be great to have a pin method to at least show certain tags on the search page by default, and to exclude some by default (e.g. I'd rather not ever see horror games when searching). This might best be a settings page thing (maybe another section on the existing 'tags' page). This would make it easier to look for stuff I am most interestested in rather than needing to search for the tags I might want to use each time.

For exclusion, showing the eyes all the time would make them easier to notice. Although I'm guessing you tried that and thought it was too cluttered. Oops, I had another suggestion with three icons before the tags (one for required, one for any checked tag, and one for excluded) but amusingly the 'prohibited' emoji caused the forum to remove the rest of the post :/. Maybe a better suggestion is the one I mentioned after that to have three sections of tags all with the same tags, 'required tags', 'included tags', and 'excluded tags'. Then each is just a checkbox for the section.

I noticed 8doors is tagged 'story rich', which is not what I would consider story rich since there is very little story, although the setting is very important for the game. I'd suggest a pair of tags, one for distinctive setting and one for extensive story.

It would be great if excluding 'horror' excluded everything tagged 'psychological horror' and 'survival horror'.

I suggest an 'otome' tag, maybe 'yuri' and 'yaoi'. And 'lolicon' to be able to exclude it.

I agree with combining generas with tags or if not add a search box to generas to allow access to the other generas. I'd say combine on the game page as well but still emphasise the top three tags and possibly restrict what tags can be selected for those top three tags.

Edit to add: Another option for personalization might be to allow named custom searches to be defined in settings (only per account) and if you have defined such searches they appear at the top of the left side of the catalog page and selecting them will prefill that search info (what tags to select and exclude). Maybe they could allow more complex searches as well such as (A and B) or (C and D) that would be hard to indicate in a sidebar.

Another thought is to allow creation of arbitrary lists and then allow them to be included or excluded from searches, to allow using the catalog to look up wishlisted games (and split the wishlist into multiple lists for those of us with longer wishlists) or create a "not interested" list or make our own adjustments (i.e. I could make a "not really a platformer" list and exclude that when looking for platformers).