Usually a few days or weeks after being released a game gets a "Related games" tab added to the top right corner of its store page. As an user I don't know the precise details, but in my experience from Itch I can only guess that the algorithm takes into consideration things like

• with what other games does this game get grouped often in collections?
• what other games are rated highly by the people who rated this game highly?
• what other games share tags with this game?

And so on.

I think this automatized system is largely good, and talking with players I've heard stories of them playing multiple games going by these recommendations alone. So I'd say it generally does its job very well!

That said, I think that it's also a bit wasteful or misleading because the page is called "RELATED GAMES", and in some cases a developer will have multiple games related to each other that don't show up there.

For example, I have a project which is available in two versions, but the alternative version is halfway down in the Related Games section of the main one. And recently someone made a fan game of said main project, which is nowhere to be seen in the Related Games page.

Overall I think Itch's algorithm here is great, but the lack of any sort of human touch is a loss. There are games which are, very literally, related to each other but the algorithm can't discern that. This is particularly damaging for fan games based on other projects available on Itch and for the devs of the original projects, who may want to showcase community creations.

I think this is a real loss. Wouldn't it be great if, when you checked the Related Games section of a project, you were be shown some of developer-approved mods the community made for it?

A solution would be allowing developers to pick a handful of the games that show up on the first row in the Related Games section. I don't know how difficult that would be to implement, but it would solve the issue for almost everyone.