In other words: For the first Smash they chose the stars of Nintendo consoles such as Mario, Link, Samus, Kirby, etc. With 'steam star characters' is a bit complicated because many steam games are on consoles, but let's say it could be characters like Gordon, Chell or TF2 Heavy.
From your point of view, which are Itch.io star characters?
Your Steam example is specifically Valve characters, which makes sense as that’s what people go to Steam for, mostly.
But Itch isn’t a game developer, so you’re left with a mishmash of whatever different trends are on at any time, which as of now is horror games. So.. I guess Baldi? Then again, Baldi is on Steam, too, IIRC.
To be honest, I don’t think there is an answer. No Itch game has ever really been a “killer app” for the platform.
