I assumed someone would've made something that looks nice lol

Exactly! I harbor nostalgia for the old Windows 3 desktop icon grid, so I open a file manager window pointing to ~/Desktop and display the *.desktop shortcuts there as icons. This is done automatically when gdm starts. My file manager is PCManFM, which is a rip-off of nautilus. Double-clicking on an icon opens the shortcut — be it to a terminal or a graphical application. I have to alt-tab to the PCManFM window of course, so I need the keyboard. Then I have to double-click with the mouse. It’s keeping both hemispheres of the brain active: subject/verb, left/right. Presumably you can map your game controller's buttons to keyboard equivalents like , , and (or map your game controller's buttons to PCManFM's hot key config), which would allow you to navigate the PCManFM icon grid.

I saw that while looking but isn't it just another way to search? I want to limit what can be sin just have a few specific games

That's great and definitely more on par with what I was looking for, thank you!