This is not a new thing.
https://itch.io/t/1659440/psa-beware-the-try-my-game-scam
https://itch.io/t/3512426/itch-is-not-a-safe-place-do-not-download-things
No, you cannot trust a game because it is hosted on Itch or has an Itch project or is uploaded on an account that is old. Or because the project is older.
It is trivial for bad actors to circumvent Itch scanners by doing trial and error. It is trivial to create a new account. And I did see literally hundreds of hacked accounts used for uploading malware. Oldest malware I found was over two years old.
Their profiles are not hidden. You speak about the missing link to their profile, I guess. There is none, because it is empty and has no comments. That's not unusual for regular profiles. The malware uploaders constantly change their patterns, so it is moot to talk about specifics. They just try around till they get indexed. And I guess there are a lot of bad projects cought early that we do not even see, but we do see some of the collateral by all those developers complaining about being put in quarantine.
My general advice is to establish trust by different means. Which mostly translates to not downloading new & shiny things. And treating any downloads as unsafe. So using sandboxing methods is recommended. Coincidentally, the Itch app provides a user level sandbox. This should prevent browser data theft, like login cookies.
I have seen malware that did not trigger on virustotal, malware that was signed and to shame Itch's scanners, malware that was immediatly cought by Windows Defender. Malware on an acount with about a hundred followers and so on.
Also blog postings that link to malware on accounts which have 50+ followers. And of course the recent trend of spamming comment sections with links to malware.