Post by EXQUISITE Studios in My game never appeared in "Recent".

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Thank you for the detailed response. The information about the tags, build size, and the manual approval process for major updates is genuinely useful, and we’ll review those points.

To clarify, I never expected itch.io to make the game successful simply because it exists on the platform, nor did I expect “wonders.” We are already actively promoting the game elsewhere and working hard to build a community. My concern was specifically that the game had never appeared in the recent listings—not even briefly—either for its initial release or for this update, while those sections seem to be an important source of discoverability for many similar projects.

Version 0.2 represents several months of work and adds a substantial amount of new content, so from our perspective it was a major update. However, I understand now that itch.io may not classify updates based solely on the amount of work or content added, and that the freshness boost is neither automatic nor guaranteed.

Regarding the tags, that is a fair criticism. We focused too heavily on describing the format and adult nature of the game rather than its actual themes and gameplay features. We’ll take another look at them and try to use more distinctive and relevant tags.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain this and for sharing the build-size guide.

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redonihunter1 day ago(+1)

I do not know how Itch classifies updates or what they consider for approval. But without actually comparing versions and playing them, they can look at the raw data. And in my opinion, "major" updates in a game so early in development are not really major, no matter what effort you think you put it.

If I were to make a filter, I would not even consider an update to recent in the first few months at all. You are still at the chronological place of a game 3 months old. Select a few characteristic tags and you appear on page 1 of recent on those tags.

Another thing to consider, the people that do frequent the recent section might do so regularly. And they will recognise the game, since it is futile to just aimlessly browse recent for all games. They will have made some tag selections.

For example, if you select ai graphics, visual novel and adult games, thats only about 20 pages - and those are very bland tags. An interested player can skim all those in a weekend and put interesting games in a collection for later view. If you appear on page 2 or on page 7 makes little difference in my opinion. And if Itch just approves all devlogs, the most recent pages will show the same games over and over again.

You do not want to appear on top of recent, you want to appear high in popular.

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