Indie games are really only distributed in two ways now: Steam and itch, a relatively prominent indie game distribution platform that you may not have heard of. I say ‘relatively’ because while its commonly known in the world of indie games, it isn’t necessarily known outside of indie games as I’ve only ever heard a few mentions of it in the mainstream. I would compare its popularity to PICO-8, an incredibly fun and minimalist approach to gated indie distribution as well as game engine all within a compact packaged executable.
The pitch of itch (also commonly referred to as itch.io) is that anyone can upload anything provided that it isn’t blatantly illegal (copyright infringement, excessive gore, and illegal sex stuff).
Only 2 out of the 24 games put out today are not horror games.
Horror is an increasingly bloated genre on itch.io taking up increasingly more space as the platform grows in both popularity but also in the indie market and specifically a way for indie games to get exposure via offering free content in a packaged demo/mini experience on itch, then encouraging players to buy the complete game from Steam usually at a relatively low price between $5 and $20 depending on the scope and length of the game for the most part.
I have always believed that letting the indie game ‘market’ (for lack of a better term) sort itself out is the best option, but I’m starting to feel like people have figured out how to manipulate itch’s audience to get the most people to play their game. I’d have to go back and analyze the top sellers page, but horror games are filling more and more space on the top sellers page than ever. Other than itch’s curated list of featured games (aptly titled “Featured Games”), it is the one other place that itch users are led to if they don’t know where to go. It would make sense that an inexperienced user of itch would look to the most popular games on itch to see the type of games that represent the platform. But the issue is they don’t.
itch knows they aren’t the best that indies have to offer
This is not itch’s fault. They are simply hosting a page that displays to users the most popular games at that time and that makes sense to do so. itch is being let down by both its users and the developers who makes these games. It’s rare for the most popular games to coincide which the featured games. In another section itch curates, Fresh Games, the games are ranked by how often they are added to collections. Itch has never explicitly stated this, but I assume that it isn’t just a raw number of being added to collections because otherwise it would be easily manipulated. I imagine it has more to do with games that are added to collections that have a certain number of users or a specific type of user following them. Itch is by no means obligated to share exactly what process games go through to end up on the ‘Fresh Games’ list, but the games on the most popular list are almost never on the ‘featured’ games or ‘fresh’ games pages.
Why?
Itch knows that the YouTube bait jump scare horror games aren’t really worth playing.