I've always wondered how ownership of such intellectual property works in cases like this. The dev has obviously gone, but at the same time it would still be considered theirs. However it's also using pictures from the internet which they may or may not have licensed
I'm going to use the term Author to represent the project's Developer, because there are other Developers involved.
There are (at least) three parts to the project that need to be considered:
- The visual media included with the project, whose copyright is very likely held by someone other than the Author.
- The SugarCube story format that supplies the core functionality of the project, whose copyright is owned by SugarCube's Developer (a).
- The Textual and Code content written by the Author (b), which they hold the copyright for.
It should be obvious that if "you" include the project's visual media in a remake of this project, then "you" would also be breaking copyright the same way that the current Author is. But that choice is "yours" to make.
The SugarCube story format is released under a licence that allows others to use the engine as is. The only concern would be if "you" tried to release "your" own copy of that story format engine and tried to make out that it is "yours".
The Textual and Code content written by the Author is where things become legally an issue, because copyright laws are not the same in all Legal Regions. So where "fair-use" may be argued in some Legal Regions, as long as you meet the minimum requirements for such. Other Legal Regions may not have "fair-use".
And I don't know which Legal Region either the Author or "you" are in.
(a) the SugarCube story format includes code written & released by other Developers, but from memory the licences those other Developers use are compatible with the one that Sugar Cube's Developer uses.
(b) Some of the Code content written by the Author may of been obtained from sites where people like myself post solutions to technical question. But generally such code is given freely without copyright being applied.