I don't think it's dead, I decided to look into some of the stuff you mentioned and on his patreon a while back he said in the comments, "found out my lease ends in 11 days" or around that time when he was expecting a month, so I think he's potentially in a bad spot and can't focus on the game at the moment. especially since about 4 months ago he said to a meme about this being alive "i both cried and laughed at this, the next update is huge so it's taking a while, thanks for being patient!" and so if we combined the potential housing issue he might going through with the fact the update is pretty large, it might just be taking forever to actually finish. but if there's no news within around like the next 2 months, it most likely is dead.