Or I thought it was. Where do the devlogs show up? Either way here is the project page https://floaty-42.itch.io/warg
Viewing post in Guidelines for showcasing a work in progress?
I am not sure if all devlogs show up. It might be that the devlog section is only some of them.
They might appear in the feed.
https://itch.io/feed?filter=posts
Your project is hidden, so they probably will not show up.
I am not aware of any sorting/demotion by release status. Oh, you can filter by it, but if you hit https://itch.io/games the games in that list are all games, from prototype to released and even cancelled games.
If you have a closed beta or something like that, you might want to have restricted access.
But as soon as you are ready to face the public opinion of whomever stumbles upon your page, or whoever visits because of your promotion, you can publish your project.
Can I make it public without publishing and showcase the progress?
I do not understand this sentence. It make no sense to me. Itch does not have publishing/release dates as Steam has them. You can't showcase a thing, that no one can see. And you can't have public feedback, if a thing is not public. If you wanna do a closed beta test, that is a different thing.
But sure, you can talk about some things in regular community threads, without publishing a thing. But the old devlogs are deprecated. The way to do this, is to publish a prototype and maybe create devlogs about that project. But all this ties in with what I wrote earlier: you need to have an audience to get feedback.
Maybe make a side project and join a game jam.