Hello! I'm not quite sure what the difference between most popular and most ratings are, they sound synonymous. Does popular mean highest rated?

PS This entry is pretty awesome, check it out :P https://andrzej-gieralt.itch.io/glitch-dash ;)

No idea :/

If I had a guess most popular looks at the amount of times people played it, where most rated simply looks at how many times it has been rated.

So, a "crappy" game, or a game that has no value in being played again may end up with a lot of ratings. However, as no one or few few will play it again it won't rank high in the popular category. A game that people enjoy and can play again will probably have people play it multiple times. When people do that the game gets seen as more popular and thus will be sorted higher, however as those people have already rated the game those don't change.

So, in short
Sort in rating-> How many people rated it
Sort in popularity -> How often it gets played

Disclaimer: This how I think it works, purely based on the names. I did not look into it at all.

Most popular is based on the times people have clicked in the thumbnail to have a look a the game, most rated is based on the amount of people that has rated that game. Also feel free to check my game :D I'll play yours right now!

So most rating is pretty easy, it's just how many people rated it.

But most popular is strange. Somewhere i read that it's quite complex algorithm combining als kind of stuff. https://itch.io/t/20674/how-is-popularity-determined

I am not sure if popular on gamejams submussions is the same.

My submission sorted by "most popular" is constantly swapping. Before i started writing i was on the last 9th !!! place. Now i am in the middle.