The game isn't necessarily dead, it really is just being put on hold. If you go to Humbird0's site and then go to his twitter you can find that it took him almost a year to get back in the saddle (He disappeared awhile ago back in like November and then posted on December his circumstances.) His next post was August of the next year (2017) He started again by doing small stories with pictures but in April he showed off that he's redoing his sprite generator on how it handled certain characteristics like sleeves and gloves as separate pieces of clothing, one of the sprites on the sheet was Misty in a black overcoat.
Just two days ago he said he was almost done with a different game with a different theme (A mini flash game like his others that he has on his site, but most of that content is now hidden albeit through going to twitter and following the links there.)
https://twitter.com/humbird0/media (For sauce.)
I don't think he's done with it completely- although that means nothing coming from me. But until he says he's done with it, really no reason to speculate otherwise.