I agree.I think this is a problem with VN's in general.
There is a lot of "Half-Life 3" moments though people don't donate to Valve for it.
On the other hand, most devs are lonely warriors. So there is a reasonable lag of updates because life.
I can't say about the game mentioned but yes, this looks like a dud.
The initial state of VN's is easy, mostly. The problem starts when they get larger, more choices, more renders. There is a big gap between ambition and realistic deliverance. So most give up later on.
Happens all the time.
I'm still hoping that HL3 will come one day... but to compare it with Valve. They don't need it, Valve doesn't need to proof anything because they are already legendary when it comes to games and they deffo don't need donations if they ever want to create a new game. And they did HL: Alyx which is imo the best VR game made till this day.
But yes, they all start motivated and after a while they realize it's too hard to deliver (especially when you're on your own), so they lose interest to complete the game and comes to a point that they just give up. It's the biggest problem with all these VN's.
Think the biggest chance to complete a game is to work in a team to keep each other in check.