Thanks for the question.
Prior knowledge of Gearbits won't be necessary for this game. If I come up with a fun way to incorporate characters or other references I'll put them in, but I'm not really planning a massive shared universe project.
I don't think I'll be adding story content to Gearbits anymore, but I would like to make a sequel someday. I have some notes about mission and gameplay ideas and a rough story outline, but nothing concrete. I've learned a lot since starting game development so I'd like to make a sequel to see how much I can improve. But there's only so many games you can make, so I don't want to immediately just do the same basic idea again.