Hi! Thanks for playing the demo!
A release this year won't be possible sadly :( I had to take a few months off of developing because I landed a new job.
I'm still working on it, but just not as much as I wish I could.
As for the saving issue, thanks for reporting it! I need a little more information:
You can only save manually at clocks in the game, not from the menu. Did the game save when you interacted with the clock, or when you reached the forest area? Or did the game fail to make a save file?