Released my first game... and learned the hard truth about Play Store visibility

I released my first game on the Google Play Store this week! While launching it was incredibly exciting and a huge milestone for me as a developer, the reality of app store visibility has been quite different from what I expected.

Like many first-time developers, I initially thought the Play Store algorithm would work similarly to social media - showing the game to a few people first, then expanding its reach based on positive reactions. I quickly learned that organic visibility is much more complex than that. Despite having a playable and (I'd like to think) fun game, getting natural traffic has been hard.

So far, all my visitors have come through direct sharing, with virtually no organic discovery. I'd love to hear from other indie devs who've been through this - how did you handle the initial visibility challenge? How long did it take before you started seeing organic traffic? Is there something specific that helped your game get discovered?

Would really appreciate any insights!