Posted August 18, 2025 by Glitch Gothic
It's been about two weeks since launching PathJack. Every morning, I wake up and check to make sure that a new puzzle is available. I play a game so that there's at least one name on the leaderboard before 5:00am ET. Once (sometimes twice) per day, I post something PathJack-related on Bluesky. How has that effort paid off during this first sprint?
So that's my baseline.
A few things stand out to me. First of all, I'm a little shocked at the low numbers on itch.io. When I look at PathJack's analytics page, I can see that there is barely any traffic here. That's concerning, for two reasons. First, I had assumed that launching through itch.io would have put more eyes on this game. Second, my Bluesky account links to PathJack on itch.io, so I have to conclude that my efforts over there didn't move the needle much over here.
I've been talking about PathJack to whoever will listen, and I hand out product cards to people I meet. My in-person pitch drives people to PathJack's official website, so those players obviously wouldn't be counted in analytics from itch.io. So it stands to reason that most of the gains made in this sprint were due to face-to-face interactions with people. Yeesh! I was really hoping my online interactions would have had more of an impact - I'm hardly a salesman in real life.
No matter what, I think the important thing here is to stay consistent, and to continue promoting PathJack. I will continue to do my daily routine, if only to see whether or not there's momentum to be gathered on Bluesky and itch.io. With another sprint or two under my belt, I might be able to see a trend forming.
What should I do differently in the coming weeks?
From what I've gathered, it might be good to invest more time in the itch.io community. I certainly haven't given up on this platform, but maybe you get out of it what you put in. I'll make a point to visit the forums and participate in discussions there. Maybe striking up conversations with other developers will help PathJack gain more visibility.
I also need to explore some additional features on Bluesky. I haven't made use of Lists, the Feed, or Chat. Maybe if I spend some time learning how to use those systems, I'll be blessed by The Algorithm!
Thanks for taking the time to read this update. Let me know if you have any ideas on what I can do differently moving forward. And please give PathJack a shot! If you enjoy puzzle games, I think you'll find it's a lot of fun.