To answer your question,
It’s pretty much psychology.
Maps pretty much can be broken down in to a few key pieces:
- Replayability
- Difficulty Curve
- Introduction of new/changing mechanics
Replayability is pretty much the biggest thing. Is it fun to play again and again?
I will mention that the search is based on the description, not the title, so the description should have stuff that people search for a-lot, but there’s not many games of. The title should be kind of clickbait and have a interesting thumbnail.
Once you start getting a lot of views (as @California_Love stated), it’ll show up higher on the lists of published games, garnering even more views.
I’d recommend looking at algorithm’s such as YouTube and Google’s search algorithms if you want to understand a bit more about this. Gimkit probably just ranks them based on plays though.
One of the best strategies are to get a bunch of plays from the wix, causing it to be higher up on the play lists (more plays).
If you be a bit more specific about why you want to know, then I can explain more.
Some basic math for the average mid map.
Let’s say you get 3 plays a day. At around 400 views it appears closer to the top, so the average map would take 133 days just to reach the basic milestone. (this is the general reason that higher quality maps/maps with more replayability rise up faster).
Just ask yourself the questions when testing/playing a map (from an objective standpoint).
- Is it fun to play?
- Would you play it multiple times?
- Does it get more difficult as the player gets better and further through the game?