The way itch.io's system works is weird in general. When you publish a game, there is a checkbox, saying "Make game visible." If you don't check that box, your game that you published is not visible. Ummmmm, so when I publish a book, if the publisher don't put it on the shelves, if they don't even put it in a search engine, that doesn't seem very published to me. We call these things "Drafts."
And yes, writing a long review that nobody could see is kinda off.