From what I understand he had a long period where he wasn't able to work on it, through RL and then other delays. So then he decided to start over from scratch since he hadn't planned to put much time into this game, but people liked it. So instead of it just being a place to test and practice stuff for his other game, he made it its own game. Which with the first release was kind of spaghetti code and slapped together.
Now he has most of the systems in place, and once he finally does drop the next update, the updates after that will be faster, since he will have the base of the game in, and just be doing the story bits.
Complain its excuses from the dev all you want, no one is making you stay here. No one is forcing you to give the dev money. The dev hasn't disappeared. He's been in his discord explaining everything as he goes. He is not a full-time game dev, he has a day job, so he doesn't get much time to work on the game all the time.
But at this point, neither side will agree, so it's whatever. Everyone is so used to being drip fed monthly updates at this point, lol.
Just think of it this way, you played the demo 2years ago, now the game is just stuck in developpment. Come back if its ever released. Tons of games I've played the demo for dont come out till years later. Oh well.