itchtrends

What is this?

itch-trends watches itch.io's browse pages over time to surface which games, tags, and genres are gaining momentum. It's built for indie devs and game-jam participants trying to decide what to make, or which trends are actually real versus noise.

How it works

itch.io doesn't publish historical ranking data. So every hour, itch-trends records the order of games across itch's feeds (Popular, New & Popular, Recent, Top Rated, Top Sellers). Comparing these hourly snapshots over time is how it computes what's climbing, what's breaking out, and how tags and genres trend.

None of these are itch.io's own official metrics — they're all computed from the snapshots itch-trends collects itself.

Genres vs. Categories

itch's tags are freeform, so itch-trends groups tags that consistently appear together into Genres and Subgenres (using network community detection). Category means itch.io's own official genre field instead — a different, itch-defined classification.

The views

• Dashboard — What's moving right now across itch.io's front pages.
• Genre Map — The genre landscape: clusters of tags that tend to appear together on the same games.
• Tags & Trends — How a tag or genre is trending over time.
• Games — Search and browse every tracked game.
• Jams — Game jams itch.io is currently hosting, with signup and entry stats.

Glossary

Genre

A computed cluster of tags that consistently appear together on the same games (see "Genres vs. Categories" above).

Subgenre

A smaller, more specific cluster nested inside a Genre.

Category

itch.io's own official genre field (e.g. Platformer, Visual Novel) — separate from itch-trends' computed Genres.

Tag

A freeform label a developer attaches to their game on itch.io.

Momentum

How much a tag's or game's presence in the feeds is increasing or decreasing over recent runs.

Over-representation (vs baseline)

How much more (or less) often a tag appears in a feed than would be expected from its overall baseline share.

Breakout score

A measure of how sharply a game has climbed the rankings — weighted toward large, sudden jumps rather than steady creep.

Top climbers

Games with the biggest positive rank change since the comparison baseline.

Rank Δ

The change in a game's or tag's rank between two snapshots — positive means it climbed.

Charted %

The share of tracked runs in which a game or tag appeared within the tracked top-N at all.

Finisher %

For jams: the share of joined participants who actually submitted an entry.

Top-N

The cutoff rank considered for a given calculation (e.g. top 500) — narrower cutoffs focus on the most prominent games.

Normalize

Rescale each series to start at the same index (100) so relative growth can be compared regardless of starting size.

Jam contribution

How much of a tag's or feed's activity is linked to games released as part of a game jam.

Run

One complete hourly scrape across all tracked feeds.

Snapshot

The recorded state (rank, rating, etc.) of a single game within a single run.

Disclaimer

itch-trends is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to itch.io in any way, and nothing here is an official itch.io statistic.

Every figure on this site is computed by itch-trends from its own hourly snapshots of itch.io's public browse pages. Those snapshots can be incomplete or out of date — runs fail, feeds change, and games that never surface in a tracked feed are never recorded. Rankings reflect feed position, not sales.

The data is provided as-is, with no warranty of accuracy or fitness for any purpose. Please don't rely on it as the sole basis for a business or financial decision.

Questions, corrections, or removal requests: [email protected].