[Edit: Development started ramping back up in December 2023]
As some folks might have noticed, it's been a while since the game had an update.
Development has largely been paused since late February, due to family emergencies. Things are not over yet, and almost certainly development won't resume for a few months (except maybe for a little bit). When things settle down, I might get back to working on the game as before, but I might take some more time to rest and reflect on where I go from here in my life.
The timing was a bit odd, since I was getting fairly close to having something I consider a good 1.0 version, and probably exiting from Early Access. I needed to choose between finishing up a smallish milestone and leaving EA, or putting things off until I return to development and devote a good amount of time and energy to doing a final release that involved a proper amount of marketing effort, or just stopping development. Since I had really been enjoying working on the game a lot, and I MIGHT find I have the same enthusiasm some time in the future, I chose to just have things be paused, so I can do a proper wrap up to exit EA, and possibly keep working on the game for a long time after that (mmm maybe).
I guess some people will assume the game is now abandoned, and of course a huge number of games in Early Access do get abandoned, so that's fine, but there is still a good chance I'll get back to it once I'm ready. The odds are not 100% that I do this, but certainly not 0%.