Yeah, direct links to projects that haven't been deleted, should still work.
But unfortunately, the issue with only accessing a game via a direct link, is that the traffic won't be anywhere near the same as before.
About 90% of my traffic here, was people searching games directly through itch io tags like the "adult" tag, or going to a browse tab like "popular games" and seeing my game on the front page and playing it.
Without this, adult games are basically dead here.
Hopefully it'll all go back to normal soon, but if not, then I might have to look to other platforms to host my game.