you might need to run the executable as administrator. if I'm reading this correctly, it's trying to find a non-existent save file, which means some setting on your PC is keeping that file from being generated
I tested running the game as administrator and it didn’t solve the issue.
The JSON file still doesn’t seem to be recreated, even after a clean reinstall.
I suspect the game might be trying to read or write the config file in another directory (AppData / Documents), or failing to create it due to permissions. Deleting residual folders and testing outside Program Files didn’t help either.