I followed LT for a while now via youtube and occasionally by reading this forum, and must say, that I'm really surprised by this sudden shutdown of all communications. I realize, that the daily dev-logs and super-in-depth videos were far beyond everything most other Kickstarter-funded developers deliver in terms of updates. I don't think that we should expect that level of documentation, especially when we talk about one guy without a team to share the chores with. And given how stressed out Josh seemed to be by his own expectations of quality when it came to presentation of results, I'm glad he's not pushing himself to do this any more. It's fine, really. But as lovely as trains and wild speculation about god-knows-what scenarios are, how hard could it be, to just call in once a week with a message like:
"Hey, not dead and still working on LT. Mostly AI-work atm, and some combat-refinement. Will focus on dynamic npc-factions next."
No details, just a broad summary of what's going on. Wouldn't even need a screenshot. It would dampen a lot of the speculation, even if we're not completely up-to-date in terms of the precise implementation of new feautures.
Since we don't have anything to go on except for a month-old tweet or whatever that last sign of life might have been, here goes my theory on why Josh might choose to keep a low profile at the moment:
The road to the beta was intended to be purely gameplay-focused, an intense stretch of development devoted to better expose all the existing features to the player via the UI and to create new content and fill the game-world with stuff to explore. The first two weeks seemed to have worked out well in that regard. But seeing how Josh has his expectations to his work's quality, maybe the third week didn't meet his high standards. Maybe some gameplay-mechanic didn't work out the way he intended, or he got distracted and caught himself working on architecture or tools again four days into the week (declared opposite of what RTB was supposed to be about). Both of those scenarios might have prompted him to postpone the update for a few days. Depending on how the development progressed, he could have stumbled into the next trap: Feeling that he made up for the original mishap, but that the things he had to show were really only worth one week, and not the two that had passed by that time. Maybe if he pushed the update again and tried to work even harder for a few more days, then perhaps he would have enough (by Josh's standards) results to present the next week? You see where this is going, racing his own expectations and perfectionism this could go on quite a while. Meanwhile, comments in the forums or on the KS-page stating, that they would have expected the beta for a while now and don't believe LT will ever be finished, don't exactly encourage someone like Josh to present an update, which is - in his mind - not yet as advanced as he envisioned at the start of RTB.
But I believe that, between the (vocal) edge-cases of
"The development is done and we'll never see a beta. Just move on and accept that your money's gone."
and
"Everything's fine, we'll see a playable beta any day now, you'll see. No no he's not dead, he's, he's resting! Beautiful plumage! And look: Trains!"
, there are probably a lot of silent followers like me, who might just be perfectly fine with a simple sign of life every now and again. Even if it doesn't coincide with a massive update-video or detailed explanations of every single feature that had been worked on. Until then, you'll always get posts like this one, speculating about possibilities and likelihoods of different scenarios and motives. And as time (and the radio-silence) goes on, the speculations will probably not tend to increase in positivity.
I hope, that all is well and that we'll hear some kind of progress report soon. Even if there are problems and delays. Love the idea behind the project, especially the procedural generation and the emergent behaviour it gives rise to, and intend to spend a lot of time observing the AI and dynamic world once it's been released. Best of luck!