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Is it possible to bump my project to the top of Recent?

A topic by Neonfire Studio created 27 days ago Views: 189 Replies: 8

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I wanted to ask for some guidance about the Recent section on itch.io. I know that major updates can (sometimes) push a project back to the top of Recent, and that these updates are reviewed first and it’s not guaranteed.

My game: https://neonfire-studio.itch.io/knock-knock

Here’s my situation:

I worked really hard on my game for 3–4 months and recently released it.
I made two updates: one on release day (before the project was indexed) and one after the game was indexed on itch.io.
After the second update, my game didn’t appear at the top of Recent, and I’ve been feeling discouraged because I was relying on that visibility (I know, probably not the best plan, but I put a lot of heart into this project).

From what I’ve observed, many popular games on itch.io seem to get discovered through Recent, where players find and try them.

My question is: Is there any legitimate way to get a project to appear at the top of Recent now? Or am I out of options for that?

I really appreciate any advice and I’m open to hearing about how others got visibility for their games beyond Recent.

Thanks so much!

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redonihunter27 days ago

Hmm. Might be a case of correlation and causation not being equal.

New & popular games will of course have been seen on recent. But was that the cause of their popularity. Would the have gotten popular regardless because of their promotion?

If doing zero promotion, being seen at some places where people look is of course of benefit, I guess. But this is horror genere and there are like 1500 new horror games each month. Even with promotion, chances are low to get popular, just because people try the game. Using a major update bump for that with a 22 days old game is futile imho. You are still on top of recent for your tags.

After a fleeting glance at your game, my impression is, that your game is doing well. And this is backed up at your ranking in this here.

https://itch.io/games/last-30-days/tag-psx

That's roughly place 30 of 130.

https://itch.io/games/new-and-popular/tag-psx

It is on page 3 of 108, so maybe people should ask you for advice ;-)

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Neonfire Studio27 days ago (1 edit)

Hey, thanks a lot for the reply. I really appreciate you taking the time to look at my game and explain things so clearly.

You’re right, I probably got too focused on trying to get to the top of Recent and didn’t think enough about the bigger picture. After working on this for months, I was just hoping for a bit of a boost.

And honestly, I didn’t even realize my game was doing okay in the PSX tag, so thanks for pointing that out! That actually makes me feel better. But yeah, the thing is, most people probably don’t search in the last 30 days or new and popular with PSX tags, so I guess that doesn’t help a ton either. I feel like bumping to the top of Recent in the horror tag could really help give it a bit of a push, I totally missed that chance because it took 8 days for my game to get indexed. And even with the rankings, it honestly didn’t help as much as I had hoped.

I’ve got around 70 downloads so far, but barely any feedback, just 2 or 3 comments. Usually people make videos on their channels, but that hasn’t happened yet, which made me start thinking maybe I should try something else or if something is wrong.

Anyway, I really appreciate your reply, this helped a lot!

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lyn-marie excelsiaAdmin27 days ago (1 edit) (+3)

The "Recent games" section is not really the place where games get discovered; most of our popular games are there for a variety of reasons whether it be overall quality, marketing strategy, or sometimes pure luck (much like all marketplaces).

The "Popular" browse section is far more likely to bring traffic than Recent Uploads, which is often getting rapidly populated basically every nanosecond by projects of all varieties of completion and quality, lol. We strongly recommend that users who want to increase their visibility work to advertise their project on places other than itch.io, as the activity will increase the chances you land in the Popular section; we have over a million projects that we host on our site, and with such a high density of projects, not all of them are going to immediately spark a boost in popularity just by virtue of them being released on itch.io and showing up in the recent uploads.

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Neonfire Studio26 days ago (1 edit)

Hey, thanks so much for the reply, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain that. I understand it properly now. It makes sense that Recent isn’t really where discovery happens, and that it’s more about overall quality, marketing, and sometimes just luck. I guess I was too focused on that one section without realizing how fast it moves and how much is getting uploaded all the time.

I’ll shift my focus toward promoting outside itch.io and trying to build activity that might help my project show up in Popular.

If I can ask an off-topic but related question: will my future games also be held for manual review before they appear in search and tags, or will that process be automatic now? Just trying to understand what to expect next time.

Thanks again for the help, this gave me a much clearer idea of how to approach things going forward.

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lyn-marie excelsiaAdmin26 days ago(+1)

All uploads are put through our queue in order to ensure consistent legitimacy overall, but you should typically be put through in a few days!

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Neonfire Studio25 days ago (2 edits)

Hey, thanks again for all your help! I’m just curious, I’ve noticed that some games seem to get indexed almost instantly after upload. Is that because of account trust level or something else? And is there any way I can work toward that?

I know most of my earlier games didn’t meet all the requirements to get indexed (since they were just for jams and missing things like screenshots). If I upload 1–2 proper games and maybe remove those old ones, would that help improve my account or speed up future indexing?

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lyn-marie excelsiaAdmin24 days ago(+1)

Our queue organizes games and what order they get put through the queue by a variety of factors, such as risk level and past history of their account. It's also entirely possible that some games end up getting indexed faster simply because a staff member was online and received the game in their queue as they were working. As highlighted earlier, the recent releases section is a very small part of itch's overall "algorithmic discovery" aspect of promotion. That being said, generally the more work you put into having a full page (video, screenshots, detailed descriptions, page design) will showcase a higher degree of quality on your page which can lead to quicker indexing, but there is no exact science to when projects do or don't get indexed and how quickly or slowly that happens, as we have to go through hundreds of games a day, and the rate at which users upload new content is noticeably higher.

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Neonfire Studio24 days ago

Thanks for explaining so clearly. Much appreciated!

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lyn-marie excelsiaAdmin archived this topic 24 days ago

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