I joined the creators Patreon to figure out what was going on. Long story short life took a toll as some medical issues (not the virus) hit which caused the delay in the private release.
Good news is the creator has clarified with absolute certainty that this game will not be dying. They still intend to keep creating and love what support they have been getting. But that said reminds us that this is a hobby project, they work on this at their leisure so don't expect any hard dead lines. They enjoy working on this, enjoy getting feed back from the players, and wants to keep it like that.
No word about public releases at the moment, but a lot of work has been going into the game since it was last seen.