I've tried pressing all the buttons in the menu, and the only ones that do something when I press them are the options, patreon and discord link. 

I've tried opening the game from itch and from my files and I'm not to keen on deleting the game as I've got some good save files

I think it has something to do with your save, because when I put the updated files in my game folder I had the same issue, but when I made a folder without the old saves I was able to play the game normally

had this issue myself, i just reinstalled the game and that fixed it. did mean having to start again but i reckon tha is due to old saves being broken

Haven't even started once and haven't been able to click on any button but "Options"..... deleted and reinstalled 3 times already...

https://itch.io/t/4370963/save-files-of-016-cannot-load-to-017

If you cannot click load button, one or more files in your save folder have expressions the game cannot read, or are missing stuff the game expects to find on load. Game seems to scan all files in the save folder, and if even one is not up to par with what it wants, it won't load anything, period.
And I suppose it won't let you start a new game cuz that would make a new auto-save, which would be inaccessible due to the policy of not going near the save folder when there's stuff in it the game won't like...vicious circle, see^^.

I only started playing on this most recent version, but just seeing all the new races added in alpha 0.17 makes me think old 0.16 save files lack a ton of stuff compared to saves from this version. So no, old save files from alpha 0.16 will not work anymore.

Kick all old files from your save folder, try to start a new game, if it works save and see if it loads that file.

EDIT: And Happy new year all^^.

кто то может подсказать как добавлять свои сохранения из другой версии в другую?

А и еще как исправить баг с застревающей и прозрачной одеждой? или это у всех так? (с новым годом всех вас ребят! :3)