I had never heard about this, but my first reaction is that I feel bad for this guy, because if you consider that he was self taught he really was very talented. Checkout the gameplay videos. He wrote all of that himself in C++ and did the graphics with seemingly no training. I'm not saying it would've been a great game, because I don't know that, just that he as an individual could've been successful.

I read the book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels [0] last year and it includes the story of the guy who created Stardew Valley. He also spent five years on it, working alone. He also was self taught and did the graphics himself. It was even kind of a similar type of game. I actually think Bob could've made Stardew Valley. It sounds like mental illness got in the way. One question we have to ask ourselves is what came first—the mental illness or the game development. Did the whole experience of the isolated game development actually lead to the mental illness?

By the way, I don't recommend Blood, Sweat, and Pixels as a whole, but I do recommend the chapter on Stardew Valley. It's inspirational (or fatiguing because that guy worked so hard with no clear reward coming) for indie developers.

[0]: https://amzn.to/3ya9Y6A

Edit Addition: I feel bad for writing about the developer in the past tense. There is no reason he couldn't still be successful in life.