Publish Your Game: from a folder on your computer to a link your friends can play.
The step beginners most often never take isn't building — it's publishing, usually because nobody wrote the steps down in order. This pack is the steps, in order, ending at a public itch.io page that plays in the browser.
Forge entry · Bundle Wave 1 · the itch checklist generalises the upload guide proven on Poppy's Sniffari, a real game from this project · packed 2026-10-23. One of the Forge shelf.
The worked example: this checklist has already shipped a game
The itch.io steps in this pack aren't a summary of itch's docs. They are the click-by-click checklist this project used to publish Poppy's Sniffari — a browser-playable game that lives at testmyself.app/poppy-walk — as an itch.io browser build: upload the zip, tick “played in the browser,” viewport 1280 × 720, mobile-friendly ticked because its touch controls are real, free with the donation button. The pack generalises the game names out and keeps every step that mattered — including the two that bite first-timers:
- index.html at the zip's root. A zipped subfolder is the #1 reason first uploads “don't work” — itch looks for the game at the top level.
- Play your own game from the published page, in a private window, start to finish. You are checking the shipped thing, not your memory of it.
The route
- Export a web build (Godot pack's export guide covers the clicks) and zip it, index.html at the root.
- Pre-flight — play the export once, gather a cover image, one sentence, 3–5 screenshots, so the listing takes one sitting.
- List on itch.io — free account, new project, upload, browser-play ticked, viewport set, classification honest, pricing free.
- Publish, then verify from the page itself — and send the link to three people who will actually play it.
What it costs (the whole table, honestly sourced)
| Export + itch.io listing | $0 — no listing fee, no approval queue. itch's revenue share is your choice (0–100%, default 10%). |
| Free hosting alternates | $0 on free tiers — Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, GitHub Pages. Service-class: a company can shrink a tier; your files stay yours and moving is an upload. |
| The stores (later, optional) | Google Play $25 one-time, Steam $100 per game — the stores' own published fees, from the beginner survey's accounting, not our numbers. Most first games should go to neither until itch says someone wants to play. |
| A first game's real total | One beginner's shipped game cost $45 all-in — and the publishing step was $0 of it. |
The nits, stated plainly
- Free tiers are services, not licenses. The sweep that sourced this pack classifies hosting as service-class for a reason: terms change. Every route here keeps your game as plain files you own, so the exit is an upload elsewhere, never a rebuild.
- “Free” on itch still has the share setting. The default revenue share is 10%; the pack tells you where the setting lives instead of pretending the default is the only option.
- Unsigned Windows downloads trigger SmartScreen warnings. Normal for indie uploads; the checklist has you say “click run anyway” on the page so friends don't panic.
- Publishing is not an audience. The checklist ends at a working public link and three real players. Discovery is a different problem, and this pack doesn't pretend a checklist solves it.
Download the pack
| File | What it is | Size |
|---|---|---|
| README.md | The route in one page: export, list, share — and what isn't an itch-shaped game | 1,558 B |
| publish-checklist.md | The end-to-end checklist: pre-flight, the itch listing, the after-publishing checks | 2,756 B |
| hosting-routes.md | Free hosting alternates — Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, GitHub Pages — marked as service-class | 1,931 B |
| costs.md | The whole cost table: $0 until the stores, whose fees are printed as theirs | 1,421 B |
⬇ Download all four — publish-your-game-pack.zip🎮 Back one step: the Godot pack
Adding to the Forge
A Forge entry needs a name, a one-line claim, an author line, a worked example with real measurements, the files, and its limitations on its page — this one included.