Hey guys,
Quick introduction - I'm an environment artist at JAW working on Abe :P
The feedback has been great, it means a lot to us that you like what you've seen. You can't imagine how much we have worried about not capturing the proper feel of the original that we all love, so seeing real fans of the game happy is an insane feeling.
There are a couple of issues you've brought up and I will address what I can quickly as I'm just heading out.
Pretty much all character effects are WIP, some being created just before the guys took the build down London, Don't worry about those
Audio is again WIP, as you picked up on there are some sounds missing, they've not been forgotten, we have some great guys working on those, I think you'll all be pleased with them
New areas were mentioned. What we actually aimed for here was to snap aware from the reused backgrounds of the original game and make Rupture farms feel more like a working environment. This means we have pretty much kept the same layout and puzzles of the original game but just made the environments more dynamic.
Yes you can stop the lift wherever you want, and the pulley lift is not forgotten
The status boards for employees, casualities and escapees will be featuring those stats. As it stands though we haven't had time to incorporate that kind of flash-type magic.
I hope that answers a few of your questions.
It's been really great to see fan feedback, this is what we work for so thank you