You can ping the official itch.io accounts on X and Mastodon with a link to your game, and if staff likes it, they'll boost your post. What does that have to do with the game being alive? What do you mean by that?
So, have a website, use social media, talk to people and remind them of your game. Otherwise of course it could be missed among literally a million others.
hey, did my game got featured for few mins?