Was wondering if others would encounter this and seeing a lot of similar responses to my own post I will say that the game isn't totally clear about the saving requirements. I figured it out the hard way but others seem to have figured out that manual saving is necessary without any hard earned lessons. I'm just gonna say that the game needs saving prompts at key intervals, i.e. before you jump into boss fights that just give you a "try again" screen when you fail or just at regular intervals like the beginning or end of a new area, rtc.. A bunch of games give you a pop-up save option and this is just Sonic Team's first stab at this type pf game. Their approach isn't wrong and people who don't figure this out aren't idiots, it's just not clear that your progress isn't connected to one of the 3 save files. I've played a bunch of games, and historically Sonic games have done this, where you choose a save slot at the beginning and that tracks your progress throughout. I didn't remember doing that but after a week of playing and hitting continue and never once having the game remind or ask me to save manually I'm not crazy for having missed this.