Yep, I could confirm your recent download test
(But I imagine you have to visit the project and get the download link 1st place right?)
Viewing post in Suspicious amount of downloads
There are views on those pages on the download day or the day before. And the download page itself can be a different page. In case of download managers it might be different.
Also, there are people having issues with downloads for various reasons and some use download managers.
https://itch.io/t/5658832/download-links-keep-expiring-during-download