Do any of you plan months in advanced to release games on Halloween. I can imagine some do ( since it seems horror is an extremely popular ( and easily marketed ) genre here.

What do you guys think?  Is Halloween on here like Inktober?

My guess is, that it only matters if you do actual advertisments and promotion.

Getting traffic from being in most recent is 5 minute fame. Especially if you release at a time when many peole release things. The list scrolls away fast. You need to be incredibly lucky to randomly hit people that would like your game.

Releasing a theme based game shortly before such a theme sure will get some additional views. https://itch.io/games/tag-halloween does exist and has many games.

But I would also guess, you would rather release at the earliest you have a playable demo and simply do promotion around certain dates that might be linked to your game. If people search for your game's name or browse the tags your have, they will find you even if you released last year.