Warning: The following text contains spoilers regarding Season 1 Episode 1!

I've encountered some saving issues while finishing Episode 1 and starting Episode 2. This is what happened:

In the last chapter of Episode 1, as kind of a conclusion, you're doing a recap by talking to all the remaining folks, reflecting on all the decisions you've made so far. When you had to decide between Doug and Carley at the store, I chose Carley. This is indicated by seeing Doug's body among a bunch of dead zombies, as well as talking to Carley in said last chapter. After finishing all the talks, the game shows a quick "coming up on Episode 2" preview, in which Carley also made an appearance. Then it shows some statistics about how other players decided in certain situations. Then the credits roll. Then it brought me to the main menu. I clicked to continue, chose my saved game, and it automatically switched me over to Episode 2. I started playing, and within minutes I found out that Doug apparently is still alive, while Carley seems to be gone!

First I thought this might just be a weird temporarily bug, so I reloaded the savegame, started playing, and the same thing happened again. I became a little bit pissed, and decided to rewind and replay the last chapter of Episode 1, only to find out that this time shit's got even weirder: Instead of Doug's dead body, it showed me Carley's body, immedeately before making me talk to her! As if the game couldn't remember for whom of the two I decided and replaced Doug with a second Carley. Furthermore, when starting with Episode 2, it skipped the whole intro sequence with the two boys and the teacher and started me right off when the group returnes to the camp. And just like last time, Carley's dead, Doug's alive.

I suppose the game randomly starts me off at Episode 2 as if I never played the first one, not remembering any of the decisions I've made. But isn't this the whole point of playing a game like that? Now I have two options: Continue playing a game that doesn't remember my decisions, or starting all over again, hoping that this time the save system works.

This is really pissing me off. Has anybody else encountered this problem? Any suggestions how to fix it?

Belive it or not, it got even worse.

So I gave it another shot and rewinded even further to a point before you decide between Doug and Carley. I played everything all over again, and guess what: Nothing changed. Two Carleys in the last chapter of Episode 1 - one dead, one alive. And no Carley in the first chapter of Episode 2, just Doug. It wasn't until aborting the game and going back to main menu when I noticed: Now there's a completely different set of savegames! Instead of the three savegames in the three slots I had before starting the game, now it shows only two savegames but with different time stamps, and the third slot is empty. When I load any of the two saves only half of the chapters from Episode 1 are available to rewind to. After exiting and restarting the game I get back the three original savegames with all 13 chapters from Episode 1.

I decided to walk down desperation road and gave it one last try. Booted up the game, loaded a save, started with Episode 2... and this time, out of nowhere, it actually worked just fine. All my choises seemed to be implemented. So I stuck to it and played through Episode 2, only to find out after finishing it that now there's yet another set of savegames. By then I wasn't even surprised anymore. But this wasn't the only thing that changed. When trying to start Episode 3 the game wouldn't let me because where the play button used to be now it only says "coming soon". In fact, every episode except for the first one is now marked as "coming soon" as if they weren't even out yet, let alone installed. Once again, I can't continue.

Holy shit. This is a mess. It's like the game is simultaniously running several different installations, all with their own set of savegame slots and different access privileges, switching back and forth between them, depending on wether I freshly start the application or exit to the menu from a running game. How's this even possible?

I think it may indeed be doing that. I've encountered some issues in which installing the game on Windows requires elevated admin privileges, but in doing so it creates a save folder in the admin account instead of the standard user account from which it is being run.

You may want to check your other user folders to see if there are multiple save games being used. The savegame folder is located at: Users\%username%\Documents\Telltale Games\The Walking Dead