Hello readers, I'm Ryan, one of the programmers and somewhat of a community manager for our game, Tenril.

For today's post, I will be sharing the knowledge I gained through my time on Tenril as well as my findings on Itch.io in general. Below I will be discussing some key points on how to maximise the potential of gaining users and a following around your game! The topics that will be covered in this post are as follows:

1. Initial release
2. Itch page setup
3. Tags
4. WebGL
5. Devlogs
6. Having your own audience from the start
7. Interact with the community
8. Availability across platforms
   
9. Collections

1. Initial Release:
One part that has always remained consistent throughout my publications on itch, is the initial release popularity. When you publish your game to Itch.io, it appears in the new section. This is the most important timeframe for your game as it will be seen by most people at this point. Making sure that you are all set up properly before you publish the game, whether it be a prototype, early access or a full release, is vital. You will have about 1-3 days before the game starts to drop in the number of daily visits and downloads. The next points will help you improve your initial release.

2. Itch page setup

Your cover image and description are some of the most important parts of your game, if these don't grab the attention of players, your game has already lost a large chunk of its potential players. This is because when you are browsing the thousands of games as a player, the only things you see are the cover images and the descriptions. Naturally people like pictures, so out of the 2, your cover image is incredibly important! Make something that grabs people's attention. What works best, personally, is something with warmer colours, a lot of games have rather dark cover images, so something brighter, if suitable, will stand out more. I'm no artist so my knowledge of this theory is purely from what I've found and I'm sure you can find other articles that specifically speak of these topics and what to do, so I'll stop with my explanation on that here.

For your game description, you want something that can explain the game in a short sentence. This can be difficult but the text space is rather limited and most of it will get cut off when people are browsing so a few words is all you want. What you write exactly depends on your game, but try to find something that explains what you want the player's view of the game to be.

3. Tags

Tags? Tags. Tags are what filter your game on the browse section. You can have up to a maximum of 10 tags for your game, and you'll want to use all of them. A lot of games get published on itch every hour, your game will get lost in the new quickly, but a way to keep it staying as one of the first search results is the use of tags. Try to use popular tags. Don't choose something like "Generator" if you have 9/10 tags and another suitable tag is "Adventure". You have very few tags and getting ones that are popularly searched is going to be a big boost in long term traction. You can find the most popular tags here.

4. WebGL

This one does not apply to all games but if possible a WebGL version of your game will attract significant attention to your game. As an example, a game I published called Fisher Fisher is the most played game that I made by a long shot, and this is most likely because you can play the game directly from your browser. If it seems viable, get your game to work on WebGL, you can look at your game engine if it supports it, it will be worth the effort!

5. Devlogs

Devlogs are posts that you can submit to Itch.io, these can provide a small boost to your game's activity and reach. It also can be a way to keep your community interested in your product by giving them more material to consume of your game. Some recommendations for devlogs are talking about technical parts of your game, design choices or perhaps storyboarding. Many other topics can be discussed as well, these are some easy ones to make though. And before I forget, a mistake I see on a lot of devlogs is bad naming/cover images. Please, use something attractive. The same reason why a bad itch page will lose you viewers, a bad devlog will not receive much attention either. Try to put some delay between your posts, perhaps a few hours if you can't wait a full day. If a person sees multiple posts from the same game with the same cover image they all together look unappealing.

6. Having your own audience from the start

Itch.io is a great place to share your games and gain a following, but on its own, you might get a few hundred views and maybe 50 plays, which is, by all means, a good amount. In the sea of games, getting that kind of attention is pretty difficult. However, it doesn't have to be reliant purely on Itch.io, what you need is to get your game noticed outside of itch. The best place to start with gaining an audience is social media, mainly Reddit and Twitter, both of these make great use of their own way of spreading your posts. 

Reddit, of course, has subreddits, some places I would recommend posting is r/IndieGaming, r/gamedev and as expected r/itchio (I'm mostly recommending itch.io because id like it to grow and it would serve as the perfect place to discuss your game and knowledge of things itch specific). For Twitter, you can use hashtags such as indiedev, gamedev and whatever you have character space for. What's also nice about Twitter, is that there are bot accounts that will find posts with specific tags related to game development that will automatically reshare your posts if it contains a matching tag, these can be hard to find but once you do keep that tag in mind since its a massive boost in reach.

7. Interacting with the community

If you want your game to get players and feedback but are not doing so yourself for others, then you're being hypocritical. Spend some time in a day, play maybe 1 or 2 games, leave a review and maybe a comment on the game. You will make that creators day, give them a follow and give them some encouragement on their posts. You might gain some followers from doing so, which will, in turn, boost the reach of your game(s). It could go further into creating a network with other talented game creators which is a net positive for you as a game creator.

8. Availability across platforms

If your game is only playable on windows, it should be expected that you don't get as many plays, mac is pretty popular and Linux users are shown to be the most active for reporting bugs and such based on a post on Reddit. Most games only support Windows, yours will stand out more if it works on multiple platforms.

9. Collection

This one you won't have much control over sadly but it is also a good way to get more views. If the active userbase likes a game, they will possibly add it to a collection, this puts it in a list with other games under a title, consider it the same as a youtube playlist. Someone who finds a collection that matches their liking will be more likely to find your game since games kinda get pushed aside by newer games quickly due to how much gets uploaded here. Create some collections of your own for a start and add your game to a suitable collection, this will do you some good.

Closing off:
That covers all I wanted to discuss in this post, I do hope it is helpful to newer publishers and best of luck with your games! If you got this far and you aren't sure, I can give you feedback on your game and follow your projects to help with QA! Have a pleasant day.