'Please give Novus one more chance': An 11-year-old early access survival game just got its first update since 2018

What happened?

• Early access survival game Novus Inceptio got a major update this week
• It's the game's first update since 2018
• The game entered early access in October 2015 (and is still in early access)
• The solo dev says "the energy and the will to finish the project are back"
• The map has gone from 9 km² to 64 km² of "pure wilderness"
• Combat has been rebuilt
• It's now singleplayer but there are plans for co-op

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

PC Gamer: Why did development stop for so long?

Martin Markus Mastný: I jumped into Unity head first, learned C# and learned how to work with Unity. That went on from 2013 until the early access release on October 5, 2015: learning, making the game, trying things. The whole time I had this strong idea and excitement that one day it would be an MMORPG. I built the server layer and databases and connected it all to Unity.

Then Steam slapped me in the face :) Suddenly I had to deal with a million other things: PR, sales, the community, bugs, p...