Hi Lumenights - thanks for the supportive comments :)
The reason there's no linux build on itch is because I don't have a way to add executable permissions that the linux build needs to run correctly (unless there's a way to do that on windows i don't know about. i would gladly take help if you have it). Steam brute-forces the permissions process, so that's why I put linux/steamOS builds on there. I didn't feel it would be fair to upload a linux build on Itch if I didn't have a way to make it run properly out of the box.