Hmm... I wonder...
I might be able to take advantage of the YT algo to get my game out there.
Thumbnail could be that painting of the main antagonist. It's mysterious, cloaked, dark, and he has a wicked almost cheshire-like grin.
Then the title could be something along the lines of "I spent 9 years making this game..." or "This game took nearly a decade to make..."
I'd set up a script to talk about the game and its development in a sort of dramatic but historical way, make the video at least 10 minutes. Basically like a little documentary about how the game came to be.
I see a lot of videos like this from random channels being recommended to me all the time. Their other videos will have a much lower view count comparatively.
Think it could be a viable strategy.

@beardalaxy You should share your game on as many forums as possible. OpenGameArt has a subforum to show off your game (you have to use assets from their site but you can cheat the system by sharing some of the assets that you created). RPGCodex also has a subforum dedicated to RPG projects. There is also TIGForums but they don't seem as popular as they use to.

https://opengameart.org/forums/show-your-project

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/forums/codex-workshop.37/

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=l8144e4qac4j7sekk6alf1c4f3&board=17.0

Imageboards are also a great place to show off your games, but you need to admit that your are shilling your product because some people don't take kindly to it.

@xianc78 Yeah, I'm not a really big fan of shilling, I only bring up the game when it makes sense. I'd also rather not post the game on places I don't plan on being at least somewhat active. I'm on RPGCodex, I still need to post my game thread there though so thanks for the reminder! I've also got it on RPG Maker Web and RPG Maker Net, which are obviously very much geared toward RPG Maker games and where I expect to get the majority of my players.

@beardalaxy I checked your RPG Codex activity and I'm keeping a screenshot of this post as motivation.

I would use RPG Codex too, but the site is too focused on RPGs, including their gamedev subforum and I have no plans on creating an RPG anytime soon (unless you count Zelda-clones as RPGs which I don't). I'm also not a fan of some of their moderation policies such as having your posts being manually approved for one week and having to wait an entire year just to access their politics and off-topic subforums, but apparently, it's to keep out those types who do nothing but complain about "tha joos" and never talk about anything else, so I think it's somewhat justified. Also, I don't like this rule they have because it's vague and could be abused:

>2.2. Child Porn: We have our limits, so images AND DISCUSSIONS about child porn are right out. Try it and it will typically result in an insta-ban and nuking of your account (that is, the deletion of all the posts you've ever made).​

So does that mean if I say something like "that developer was arrested for sharing child porn", I get banned with all my posts deleted? I understand that allowing MAP-related discussions is a slippery slope (just look what happened to our instance a few years ago), but I wish they would clarify on that.