I think the dev moved on to other projects.
Yeah, it definitely comes across that way. Still, figured I should jot my thoughts down on the off-chance *this* project will ever leave Early Access. Worst case scenario: I only lost a few minutes leaving some comments, but there's always the possibility that the dev will come back here after a few months/years and be like "oh, I wouldn't've thought to check for that" and it gets fixed for future players.