It needs settings in the main menu because some players have a slow pc. even I have a slow pc and i need to adjust the quality of the game to get more fps.
https://itch.io/t/128181/pre-game-settings-menu mentioned before but if you can't access settings in game due to lag/crash - try to see if you can adjust the settings file using the info I provided - I can't verify it'll work per-say.. but I've changed other things in settings/saved game and they worked, so this should too.
Eventually I'll get around to actually checking myself since the person never replied if it was successful.