itch.io

It's certainly an interesting theory but reviews are in two categories: "Steam purchasers" and "other" and a lot of completely free games seem to have all their reviews, positive and negative in "other".  I'm not sure downloading a free game from Steam counts as a purchase unless you actually pay for something?

I don't know how he did it but I'd like to learn so I can do the same! :)

It's a free game.  But there are thousands of free games on Steam. Giving a game for free does not make it popular enough alone.

If you have noticed this Itch.io game has over thousand reviews on Steam and is on the front page of steam as a trending title. It's obviously a good game but I'm curious how did it break through?

I have to say Soaring looks good. I like the atmosphere and seems like it has challenging gameplay. Some of the short clips you have on Twitter (Soaring (@Soaringgame) / Twitter) look especially good IMO. The falling meteors and other flashy stuff. If I can offer any criticism I'd say your itch.io page could look more flashy and engaging to better match the game. But yeah, I'm not sure where to get exposure without a budget. That's tricky.

If I think about the games I've bought, personally I'm only interested about a small subsection of games and game features. If you can get my attention and showcase somehow that your game has those features then I'm ready to search for it in google (or itch or whatever) and read more about it. That could possibly lead to sale, but the game (and the marketing) has to "speak my language" and be convincing with that.

So the way I see it, not only the product has to be interesting specifically to me, you need to really push those key features with your marketing AND you need to get exposure somewhere, preferably somewhere relevant to your potential customers.

I see what you did there :)