and there are solo indie games better than this for free.
Pay what you want is popular on itch for a reason. People paying for games do not do it to have a bargain. Well, not for most indie games anyways. "better" is not an attribute that is applicable in my opinion. You just need to find people that would like what you do. Which is an incredibly hard task. And if your target audience is freeloaders to begin with, chances for donations go down.
I might be dead wrong, but my logic for releasing a work in progress, as soon at is somewhat playable, is this: you do near zero marketing. Anyone finding you or your stuff despite the lack of visibility cannot even check out if they would like what you do. They can't really have an eye on your progress. Indie game supporters like that. Evidence is all the successful unfinished games that do have a patreon. What you want to find is players that would like to see your project get finished. You will have a very hard time finding those, if you go public after it is done.
If you release a finished product, you do compete against all the finished free games. Also, you operate in a bubble. While there is danger of trolls and an even higher chance of getting no feedback at all, you also miss out on testing your game for a wider audience. And you can train and experimenting how to release a game, how to update it and so on.
Money wise, it might help if you do not think of payments for most indie games here as payments and buying a product. It is support for the developer. Itch could to a better job here and take the cake away from patreon, but pay what you want for a "free" game is essentially this concept. Bargain hunting is for Steam and more professional devs that sell minimum priced items.
Of course all that does not matter much for a hobby project and talk is cheap. The important thing is you should have fun making the game. Not even professionals can reliably go indie. I am talking about developers that have years of professinal training and worked in the business. Same for art students with a degree. Doing indipendent commissions for a living is a rarity.
If you do commissions and actually find customers for that, very well done.