None of your progress is wasted. The game is in Alpha which means it’s not finished yet. Once the game reaches a mature state, you’ll be able to buy it on itch. For now only people supporting me on SubscribeStar can unlock the full version.
I’m sorry to see that you’re upset, but I need to somehow get some return on the hundrets of hours I put into this project.
UPDATE: I thought about this for a while and I think it’s too restrictive to lock down a big part of the actual game in the demo. There will still be content that can’t be accessed in the demo, but once update 0.6.0-alpha is released, you can create all upgrades in the demo too.