I do think visibility is an excuse. The solution is to make a good game. That leads to people leaving a good review and recommending the game to other people, which then pushes your game up further on websites, to get more people to see the game, and do the same thing. I personally haven't had this happen, but I have been reading this blog (howtomarketagame.com, do know that it's more targeted to Steam), and that is a very important thing that he talks about. Also, if you want to get a ton of people to play your game, go on Steam, because that's where all the players are, and therefore the money. Here is an article about traffic and visibility on itch.io, though. https://howtomarketagame.com/2025/05/12/benchmark-itch-io-traffic/.
At this point in time, I'm not doing a lot of promotion because my game is still a WIP.
I have done some promotion on a Discord server for a similar game (with permission from the dev and server staff) before which gave me a bit of an audience to get some feedback from, and I do post occasional updates about the game on my Discord and Mastodon, but that's about it.
My game is aimed at a fairly specific audience, which is a blessing in some ways because there's a lot less competition, but it also means I'll never have the mass appeal to make it to the front page. But that's not what I want anyway - I am fairly content just expressing myself to the audience I have.
So, honestly, I don't have any good advice here, except: you should understand that there are a lot of games, and a lot of them get overlooked purely by necessity. Even if you do everything right, you still can bellyflop completely. So don't tie your self-worth to your analytics, don't quit your day job and go all-in on making a career as an indie dev, and make your game *for yourself*, first and foremost.
Probably not the answer you want. Sorry.
Also, a game absolutely *can* promote itself by word of mouth, once it has gotten enough momentum. Most games do *not* get that momentum, because a lot of games are competing for attention at any given time. Of course, you *should* make a good game - but that is no guarantee for success.
Just because you don't get the view you want, it doesn't mean that you aren't getting visibility. You might get 1000 impressions, but only have a 1% conversion rate, which means that you get 10 views. If your rate is higher, itch will probably promote your game more because it is probably more interesting. So people are seeing your games, they just don't want to play it because it doesn't look appealing. But, for the few people who you do get in the door, they will promote the game themselves if it's good. The lesson: make a good game and have a good thumbnail/short description (It's the only thing that players see to determine if they should click on your game page).