What, no side view with his tongue doing it being visible?
As for the saves, if the dev is not able to make the old saves work, all the dev needs to do is add the option to the start of new game, like do you want to start after certain events, with certain stats, money, etc.? I've seen other devs doing it.
Making saves compatible between versions for a sandbox game is a waste of time, well, that's just my opinion.
A button to start at a certain point, same thing, headache for nothing in a sandbox game, for a kinetic novel, why not, super easy to do.
As long as the game is in development, I don't even know why some devs bother dealing with save compatibility.
It's a lot of work just to please some people. They just have to deal with it, or wait for a full polished release, if restarting the game each update bothers them.
And, in a sandbox game, there's no reason stopping the dev to add content in the earlier parts of the game each updates, so you'll probably miss events.
Guys want updates every months, with tons of content, bug free, saves compatible...
Correct me if I'm wrong, they are not big production studios, they probably have to do side jobs or work on the game only on their free time.
Sometimes you have to compromise.
The 6 months between updates is not that surprising.
At least there's content worth playing, new ideas, interface improvments.
If what you see in the changelog doesn't please you, I suggest that you wait a few releases before coming back. Unfortunatly, yeah, it could be in a lot of months. That suck, but apart supporting them financially and make them confortable enough to hire some help, there's nothing we can do.