itch.io website review

3 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 2.5 s.

13 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (144 KiB).

Your mobile performance score is 76 (desktop: 98). Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

4 images could be 153 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 750 ms faster on a phone.

About 85 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 600 ms faster on a phone.

About 138 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 450 ms faster on a phone.

4 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, itch.zone and YouTube and others), adding 450 KiB and 93 ms of main-thread time.

2 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 64 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 50 ms).

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

Scripts make the browser recalculate the layout repeatedly while the page loads, which wastes processor time on phones.

Real Chrome users on phones do not pass Google's Core Web Vitals on this page (28-day field data from the Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab)). Google uses this in ranking.

Your largest element takes 4.8 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Bloodbane: The Crimson Nocturne [Post-Ludum ver.] Command y…”.

The first text or image appears after 3.0 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 846 ms for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

The page becomes fully interactive after 4.8 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 101 ms to 103 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.0 s to 1.0 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 0.22 g of CO₂e: 26.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

108 text elements don't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.

2 buttons have no accessible name, so screen readers announce just “button”.

10 tap targets are too small or too close together to hit reliably with a finger.

<svg> elements with an img or image role must have alternative text: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

75 images have no alt text, which hurts accessibility and image search.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 216 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

The page has no <main> landmark, so screen-reader users cannot jump straight to the content.

51 visible links have no text or label, so screen readers cannot say where they go.

2 form fields have no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

No canonical URL, so duplicate versions of the homepage (with or without www, with tracking parameters) can split ranking signals.

Your meta description is 206 characters; Google truncates after about 160, so the end of your pitch is cut.

Structured data found (Organization and WebSite) but with 1 problem, for example “WebSite: missing name”.

No Open Graph image, so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

No favicon is declared in the HTML, so browser tabs and Google's mobile results may show a generic icon.

The homepage links to 265 pages on itch.io and 133 external pages.

There is no /llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your key pages for AI tools (llmstxt.org). It is optional and few AI tools read it yet, so treat it as a cheap extra.

/jams, /developers, /devlogs and /community have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

/games/fun has under 150 words in the HTML. Thin pages rarely rank; if the text loads with JavaScript, crawlers that don't run it see even less.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 183 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

35 of 122 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

No Strict-Transport-Security header, so browsers may still try plain http first on a return visit.

No Content-Security-Policy header, the main browser-side defence against injected scripts.

No Permissions-Policy header to switch off camera, microphone and location for embedded content.

X-XSS-Protection is set to “1; mode=block”; the header is deprecated and can introduce bugs. Use 0 or remove it.

There is no /.well-known/security.txt telling researchers how to report a security problem to you.

itch.io has no CAA record, so any certificate authority may issue a certificate for it. A CAA record naming your provider (for example letsencrypt.org) closes that door.

No testimonials, customer logos, ratings or customer counts on the homepage: nothing tells a new visitor that others already trust you.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.

The homepage carries about 1,357 words of visible text.

DMARC is set to p=none, so mail pretending to be itch.io is still delivered. Reports are on, so moving to quarantine is the next step.

Email authentication: SPF record 25 points, plus 15 when it ends in -all (10 for ~all); DMARC record 25, plus 25 for a reject policy (15 for quarantine); a DKIM key on a common selector 10.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager (measured from a US location before any click). No consent tool was detected. Visitors from the EU, UK and several US states must be asked first.

Opening the homepage sets 3 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

No known cookie consent tool loads with the page. Some sites build their own banner, and some only show one to visitors from the EU.

Loading the homepage contacts 4 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.