I'm also building a free game. Mine gets regular views and when I'm actively working on it, a fair number of downloads each week. What I did to accomplish this is fairly simple and would likely work for most anyone.
Back in 2016, before I even released the first alpha version, I started posting progress updates to Google+ with animated gifs recorded from my game, to serve as Eye Candy. Google+ may be dead, but I managed to generate quite a bit of interest among friends and some random strangers that were interested in cellular automata (my game uses cellular automata-like algorithms for terrain changes and flowing liquid). Oddly enough, a physics professor from India was very actively sharing my progress updates with his students.
I also put a link to my Google+ collection for my progress updates into my signature on a few forums I was busy on at the time. This drove more traffic to them.
When I finally got around to making that first release, I immediately had at least 10-20 people actively interested and following the project on Itch, because I made an announcement on Google+ at the time.
Now that Google+ is dead, I've been using my game's dev log in a similar way. At major milestones, I'll send a friend or two an e-mail linking to a good dev log entry.
I also spent a lot of time talking with people in person who were interested and wrote down the URL for them to check it out. I've sometimes thought of making URL cards to hand out. These would be similar to a business card, but with the URL for my game written on it, probably with a QR code for smart phone users to scan.
One thing I would like to point out is that for me, doing all of the above also keeps me interested. I built my game engine practically from scratch (No, I do not suggest doing this, unless you really want to; personally, I enjoy tool building). It's been a long road with a lot of hard bumps along the way. Sharing those eye-popping animated gifs is one of the things that I really enjoy, because invariably, those posts tend to get triple the traffic and then lead to downloads.
Always remember: Eye Candy is your most important tool! Words may draw a few, but a well-made animated gif will likely say a lot more in the first few instants than anything you write. Some may see the animation, but will never read your words, so wow them right there!
So, to summarize:
- Make eye-popping animated demos (Eye Candy)
- Gifs work, video probably would as well, but I really suggest gifs for their immediate eye-catching nature
- Gifs are particularly good on Itch, because they're animated by default
- I cannot stress this one enough: Make stuff that looks awesome!
- Gifs work, video probably would as well, but I really suggest gifs for their immediate eye-catching nature
- Post the Eye Candy on social media or a blog/dev log
- Talk about what you're doing and why
- Talk about the technical challenges, the algorithms you choose to use and why
- Make it fun to read!
- Post the Eye Candy along with links to the above and your game itself in a forum signature on as many online forums as you use
- If you don't use forums, start using some forums
- These are really useful for increasing views on any website/web page, because if search engines see your links all over the place, they think your website is a bigger thing than it may actually be
- Talk about your game with people in person
- Share the URL if they're interested
If you get nothing else from this post, always remember the importance of Eye Candy!