As far as I’m aware, the featured games in the front page are reviewed by some people internally, that decide they are good enough to show to everyone. There are no specific steps to follow to be featured there, just make a game good enough, and possibly make a post on “Release Announcements” and some social media and hope for the best.
There is no guarantee for a game to be featured, even if it’s state of the art.
But what about the fresh games?
I don’t know for sure, but if next to “Fresh Games” you click the “View more ->” button, you arrive at this page: https://itch.io/games/newest/fresh
On the top of that page it says:
Browse a constantly updating set of projects sourced from a curated collections by our members. Check back for new additions.
Based on that I assume this also goes through a similar process like the featured games.
