Here are some advices for how to get ratings, from what I observed during this jam.

My game Land of the Unskilled is around the top 5 of most played games and this is not by luck, there's a lot of "marketing" involved.

My game :

https://itch.io/jam/wowie-jam-3/rate/935884

1. The game's page.

PLEASE add a thumbnail ! It's very important ! And something appealing, colorful. I won't go too much into détails but that's what get people to click on your game.

The title is less important but avoid "wowie jam", "my game",...

Take 2min to make your game's page. Even just changing the background color shows people you care enough to make something beautiful.

2. The Platforms.

Make your game playable in browser !!! Downloadable versions make 10% of the total plays ! Download takes time and some people don't have the time. But when you have a HTML version, sure, add  a downloadable version.

And if you don't have a HTML version, please upload at least a windows version ! Mac version are only 2% of my plays (in my game's analitics).

And upload a DAWN .ZIP FILE ! Not a .rar or .7z or another file type noone ever heard of ! Who thought that was a good idea ??

3. Marketing

Tell people about your game !

On Discord : a passive approach. Don't expect a lot of ratings if you only advertised on Discord.

Rate4Rate : YES ! Community posts ! Here ! Exchanging ratings and feedback is THE best way to get ratings ! (And play good games) Look for community posts where people play each other's game, it really works ! I got like, 20 ratings a day with that tech. (But really play people's game. Don't lie.)

If you don't have the time : at least take the time on day 1 when the votings start.  People want to play games, rate and share theirs more than any other day.

4. Don't do that

- commenting other's people game with 0 feedback just to ask them to play yours. It's spam. Don't. I even have to ban a Guy from my comments. Even Jonas told him to stop.

- make a double account to give yourself good reviews. Please don't. It's cringe. And don't do it multiple times because it's just super obvious.

- Play for play but you don't actually play back. That's toxic. I haven't seen anyone doing it until now so you can generaly trust people. But I guess it exists.

That was my tips !

Give yours now !

And thank you Jonas for this jam, I'll be back next time ! I hope it'll grow and maybe get 10000 games one day !

Idk, for me rate4rate is ruining the natural approach for the games in the jam. 

I did get quite a lot lf ratings, tho I played and left a feedback on a lot too. 

I also think the comments should be anonymous so people can actually give real feedback. I'd like to belive that people viewed my game in a neutral lens, but since I go a bit harsher than others I highly doubt that. 

If you want your game to be played, play other's game. There shouldn't be politics in the jam. 

You're right! 

Sometimes it's difficult to judge if the thumbnail is good enough to attract attention, so I recommend checking the game's CTR. 

For my game it was less than 1% initially, so I added a gif, a tagline, and reassembled the screenshots. The CTR improved to a 2%. I tried experimenting with new cover images, but it affected the CTR negatively so I reverted back. Performing simple experiments like these, and validating assumptions through qualitative analysis helps to gain more clicks. 

However I feel getting a good rank in a game jam is not dependant on number of ratings. Game quality is important too.

thanks for the advice!

You forgot one also very important thing:

Make a working, playable version of your game. There were at least a dozen of games that didn't have a working web or Windows build or the executable was missing a file UnityPlayer.dll. 

Don't waste time by making an installer or compressing your game into an EXE file. Everyone here knows what to do with ZIP archives.