Appologies. I think I might’ve come off as harsher than I meant to be. The above was meant as just painful complaining, but I wrote it in the evening and with a headache and … well.
Thank you for managing to create so much within a day! That is deeply impressive, and some mistakes are of course understandable.
“I never realized players may want to go down there to explore!”
How? I mean, you even gave us the option to use a rope! And the room got unlocked after completing the second shrine’s puzzle, so of course the solution for the third one has to be somewhere down there.
“you can use this dead end to… give somehing else a “dead end”.”
That, meanwhile, would never have occured to me. Perhaps it might be worth giving everyone that hint?
Oh. It seems there’s quite a few things I missed because I merely arrowed around the menus and used hotkeys, rather than tab. So:
I should probably stop ignoring the tab key in general really. Would give my poor arrow keys a break.
The crash indeed mostly seems to happen when entering new rooms, but it’s not 100 % consistant; I believe I’ve also gotten it while surveying. The last crash was indeed from a door though; in fact just the second door I’d opened that run, though admittedly it was in Sandbox mode (I got curious!).
I suppose I can limit my backtracking for now, though it is very sad news indeed. I’ve gotten lucky on a few runs and been able to get the Luscious Shrine placed close to the entrance, and how could I resist using that to get everything there is from the Bone Pit while not running out of steps? And on less lucky runs, without backtracking there simply aren’t enough steps.
If the feature isn’t quite working right though, perhaps you could release a quick fix where you give more steps to start with?
Edit: OK, backtracking definitely can do something — though it doesn’t seem to be crashing, necessarily. It makes the game a little confused about directions. If I backtrack to the dungeon entrance and then try to draft a new room, I will sometimes get a room that will not have a door leading back to the dungeon entrance; for example, I just placed a step-restoring shrine to the east of the dungeon entrance, but the only exits shown are north and south. The other rooms I could draft would normally have been dead ends, but were listed with no exits at all, which would’ve forced me to back track as I simply could not leave.
This sort of confusion also means I can override old rooms. For example, if north of that shrine were a Bunk Beds room that is normally a dead end, with the exit placed in a different direction, because the game claims I still have the north exit open, I could still draft a room to the north. That room would then replace the Bunk Beds room.
I hope this helps isolate the issue somewhat.
If it does, perhaps you could give me a small hint to the Howling depths room, as “payment”? Having a character that possesses the rope but is stubbornly refusing to use it is deeply annoying. Reason, what reason? Same reason you came to the bloody dungeon itself my friend; you have no self-preservation! So get down there already!
Edit2: another smaller bug I forgot to mention earlier: when navigating to the Lushious shrine, your steps should reset to 10. In actuality, they reset to 9, alikely because the 1 movement step is removed after, rather than before the reset. That should be pretty easy to fix by setting the steps given to 21 … uh I mean 11, of course.
I see. Does this arrow have a sound alternative? I cannot see it for obvious reasons.
Also, is the map supposed to be impossible to open while drafting a new room? Because that is exactly when I would most need it, to see if I have a water connection that would make placing a lava river viable — I have definitely forgot that before, because I have a hard time keeping the whole map in my head.
I have also been having some problems with the game straight up freezing and needing to be closed — usually exactly when I’ve got a particularly good run going, the bastard. But I’m not quite sure what causes it or how to reproduce it. Might be some quirk with trying to reach a room from a different direction than expected, or buggy dead ends (sometimes they show up as having no exi exits at all), but given that there is no pattern on the exact action that triggers the crash, I’m not so sure.
As it is, as enjoyable as it is to play, this may be difficult to actually complete. But I’d definitely love to try out the updates, if you plan to continue working on it!
I … wasn’t even able to get past the medium stage of the tutorial. Not even with simplified controls enabled.
Granted, given that I am generally terrible at rhythm games, that is more likely to be a skill issue than a game issue. Especially since I didn’t do that much better even when picking a slow song from my library instead. But goodness, that’s one fast medium tutorial!
Because of this, I don’t feel like I can judge the game entirely fairly. It seems like a neat concept though. You might just wish to pick different sounds, as some are less recogniseable and easy-to-hear than others, and the sound associated with the letter d has a very noticeable silence before it plays.
I also accidentally changed the starting song speed by accident. I tried to set it back to exactly 1.0, but couldn’t, and kept getting 1.8 instead.
OK, so I admit I might have a bit of a positive bias here. As someone who used to adore Code 7, this game manages to push my nostalgia buttons. OK sure, it’s horror on a space ship rather than on a space station, but still! I mean, there’s even the familiar (yet different) power puzzle!
But this is also incredibly well-made in its own right. The voice acting’s great (apart from perhaps the computer voice being a bit of an odd choice, but hey, it’s charming enough), the sound design is simple and effective, and I can’t spot any major flaws with the writing either. The navigation system doesn’t do anything especially new that I haven’t seen in other audio games, but that just means it is intuitive and easy to pick up. And with all the simple layouts and audio cues, it does everything really well. And that, IMO, is much better than needlessly trying to reinvent the wheel.
The main things I’d wish to see added here are small QoL improvements. A key that tells you your current facing direction, another to remind you of the name of the room you are currently in, etc. And I’d set q and e as turning keys instead of/alongside the arrow keys, setting something else as the interacting key. F perhaps? Then most things could be played one-handed, which would be great for some other disabilities, but mainly I’d stop pressing w when I meant to press e, which … I might’ve done a few times too many. I definitely know how to keyboard, why would you ever doubt?
Excellent game as always, Shift! Chill and funn.
The only complaint I’ve been able to think of so far is that the settings menu navigation seems to be very sensitive when using a controller. No matter how hard I tried to only move downwards with the stick, scrolling the menu also adjusted every single slider for a couple levels. I don’t think I’ve ever had that problem with your other games, so not sure what’s up there.
But yes, that small complaint — easily avoided if just using the keyboard — is all I’ve got. This’s just delightful, thank you.
This is a great concept, and I definitely had fun playing it! Good ol’ dungeon crawling, hell yeah!
The navigation mechanic is an interesting one, and I enjoyed the challenge of having to manage my steps. Unless I’m missing something obvious though, I believe the map would’ve benefited from a marker showing where you currently were, as it didn’t seem to start me off at my current location, but rather in a corner.
SAPI speech may need a bit of adjustment, as currently moving to another menu item doesn’t interrupt the first one. Of course, when using NVDA, that is not an issue.
This is definitely a WIP.
Footstep sounds play very inconsistantly, which is a pain when there is no other way to gather items but to count the steps. And that’s when you’re actually walking on the map itself; to start with I went forward, the most natural first choice, which apparently took me off the map entirely.
The ambience is nice of course, but a little too static. Though perhaps I just didn’t go in the right direction on the map?
I also had trouble with the game getting stuck together and no longer accepting any movement input, even while I was still on the map. The menus, oddly enough, still worked. It may happen after moving away from the game and then back into it, but I’m not 100% certain.
An interesting little game; I wasn’t able to get all that far, but I did manage to crunch up a few fish!
The sound design is a little confusing to me. I feel like the sounds didn’t quite center properly, as there were cases where I could’ve sworn there was a fish in front of me, but lunging did nothing. A learn sounds menu might’ve also been useful, or perhaps a list of all the new fish that played after a level-up.
I also managed to get the game to freeze at one point, with the arrow keys doing nothing anymore. But I would have to look into reproducing that before I can properly report it.
So, I died at the first choice for choosing “incorrectly”. When the “wrong” choice wasn’t even in any way unkind; if anything, I chose it because I did not want to flirt with this random woman I at that point knew nothing about beyond that my character knew her from before. I didn’t want to be creepy. As a result, I just … got stabbed.
I know this is a jam game, but that is not good storytelling.
I know I should shrug, pick the other choice, and move on. But the speech is so painfully slow that it makes me feel like the narrator believes blind people are stupid and also can’t understand normal speech. I know it is unintentional, but in a game about manners, I somehow feel like I am being made fun of.
I’m afraid I cannot get this game to open at all. I did all I thought of; made sure it wasn’t unpacked somewhere where it wouldn’t have all permissions, ran it as admin, messed with troubleshooting settings, etc., but no luck. It just doesn’t open, so I can’t even get any helpful error messages.
If it helps any, here is my OS version: Windows 10 22H2 (AMD64) build 19045.5555
Accessibility-wise, this game’s fine. It admittedly took me a bit to notice that there was a settings menu, but that’s on me; I should’ve looked at the page more rather than just smashing enter. It’s remarkable that you not only included a choice between TTS and a screen reader, but TTS adjustment settings, and even keyboard adjustment – I’ve played several games that only account for the US layout, so that’s great!
All of the settings work as they should, too. Screen reader support’s a touch wonky, with rather awkward pauses, likely because you tried to account for a much slower speech rate than I am using. Given there aren’t many tools – especially web-based – for checking when a given string has finished speaking, that’s fair enough. I have not encountered any bugs during gameplay, either.
But the gameplay itself is … unrewarding. Merely picking out the fastest and loudest sound is not particularly challenging or enjoyable, and at least for me, the time limit only adds annoyance to the mix. Besides, why bother when I get fined even just for trying? “Fuck you for your service,” more like.
There isn’t any story or flavour to keep me coming back, either. All I learn is that I’m on a spaceship and there’s a creature I need to throw out, and “winning” does not reward me with any more information like that. Nor do I get to enjoy the creature’s angry roar or scared squeak as it flies into space. I even tried sitting for a while and letting the little troublemaker destroy things to its heart’s content, but there were no fun destroying sounds, nor a hilarious game-over screen.
In short, if not for it being a jam submission, I would have no desire to replay this game. And given what I can see of your coding skills, and the fact that you submitted this 9 whole days before the deadline, I am quite confident that this is not the best work you could have produced.
The hitboxes on these puppies really are brutal! At first, I thought that each dog would have a safe line on all sides of it where you could walk while hearing it but not waking it up, but since then there’s been so many times when I walked into a dog that I should’ve surely just been walking past that I’m no longer so sure. I was especially annoyed when I stumbled into a dog snoozing right next to the kitchen door. Come on pupper, everyone there is so incredibly loud already; can’t you ignore this one human walking around while at it? I’m apparently even a ghost that makes no footstep sounds, what else do you want?
But the snores! I didn’t know dogs could make sounds like that! For that alone, all your evilness is forgiven. 10/10, would sneak around in extream fear of sleeping puppies again.
Thank you for humouring me! It really is a stupid rule, isn’t it? Especially because “fishes” is also a perfectly grammatical plural form of fish … but only when talking about multiple species of fish. Speaking of species, that one’s the same in singular and plural. And feedback is uncountable. And … ridiculous, all around. :)
That really is a shame. Of course having the lines done with TTS is better than not having them, but I hope you nanage to add voice acted versions at some point. They’re much more fun!
“Devilishly dark voice acting, rich lore, tasteful music, multiple endings, and innovative gameplay”
Hmm … I think you might want to ease off on the advertising just a touch. The same words that might make one hyped to play an AAA game do not seem quite as trustworthy when applied to something made in a month. But this is a good game, especially given the time limit!
The voice acting is charming, with the Narrator of course taking the medal for his often delightfully dramatic delivery. Granted, the quality is a touch inconsistant at times, and I have no idea if it is devilishly dark. But it was so wonderful to hear some human voices for a change, instead of just AI. For a free game made in a month, this is awesome; thank you, voice actors.
The story isn’t outstanding, relying on several tropes, but it’s enjoyable enough! Besides, a simple but complete story is much better than a complex one you could only offer a glimpse into. The rich lore might not quite be there yet, but you’ve piqued my interest in learning it if you ever expand this. Beyond the awful fact of the existence of rich people and monkey-killing potion makers, what kind of suffering is this world facing? Are the Keepers actually what the Narrator says they are, or are they something completely different – and if so, what and how and why? What would happen if you put this Narrator and the one from Slay the Princess in a room together – alright, that last one’s a joke, but the resulting argument would certainly amuse me! Perhaps there really are answers I’ve yet to find, as I have not yet discovered these multiple endings mentioned, but I still hunger for more.
The gameplay works well! Navigation is simple to figure out, sounds and ambiences are used to great effect, and walking isn’t needlessly slow, which I love. As has already been mentioned, making events easier to find would be nice; just like the cello makes a sound you can hear from a couple tiles away, perhaps the NPCs could make a noise or speak as well? I only encountered one bug: the Narrator mocked me for using one instrument twice after I’d only played one thing.
If this is your first accessible game, it is a great start, and I for one look forward to what you might make in the future.
Oh hi Eric! I am glad to have another opportunity to tell you that your game sucks. :P
Nah, just kidding. This’s pretty fun! I haven’t been able to get too far because I aparently suck myself, but I might have better luck later on.
It’s quite buggy though. Canceling doesn’t work half the time, leaving menu options mislabeled. I even got stuck by accidentally selecting an already-dead monster when switching after its death, upon which I was unable to select anyone else despite canceling. I had a good party that time, too!
Also, why x and z? Even on querty keyboards where they’re close together, it’s not the most comfortable arrangement. Space works so much better when you need to tap a key all the time. And you do, because the game doesn’t register the first keypress quite often.
But over all, this is well done. The screen reader support works beautifully, the challenge is there but feels fair, and the music is good, if hella loud. Keep it up!
I don’t expect much out of a menu in an accessible game, but it should at least be accessible. This one isn’t for me, either with self-voicing or with NVDA. It is fortunately possible to start the game with OCR, but if that’s how it’s meant to be, I would have appreciated a note on the page. What software was this game tested with, and did it work?
This seems like a neat concept, but one I am having a lot of trouble visualising – and unlike the lucky sighted players, I cannot just turn blind mode off and take a look. What kind of environment are we actually in? Does the laser’s direction change if we move left, or is it still pointing forward? Why is the turning so damn slow? This game left me with a lot of questions, and even finding the objective – which I did with guesswork more than anything, because just turning towards it and walking forward certainly didn’t wor – didn’t answer them.
Over all, I believe this would have worked better with a tutorial, as well as more sounds. Right now there do not even seem to be any footsteps, which left me confused as to whether I was even moving at times.
An interesting concept! But either the audio is not clear enough, or I am simply bad at it, because I am having a lot of trouble keeping track of where walls are and when exactly I would be in a robot’s field of vision. Admittedly I’ve never been good at games of sneaking around guards and timing things just right, but at least in this case I can take comfort in the fact that Talon of PG13 didn’t do that well on the stream, either.
I have to confess I do not like the voices. They are overdone to the point where I have trouble understanding them. I couldn’t even figure out for a while that the second and third options in the menu were “tutorial” and “credits”, for example. Robotic voices can be fun, but perhaps dial down the effects just a touch?
I wanted to love this game, I really did. It is exactly my thing! But I simply cannot get this to work properly.
The menus are frustrating. Why does getting to the next or previous option always require at least two arrow key presses, frequently more? Tab works better … when it works at all, that is. Regardless of the options, menus seem to freeze, options sometimes don’t select properly, and just generally I never know where I am and whether I’ve changed anything. I am not against using a mouse to play games if that is done accessibly, so I will test with one later to see if it works any better – I misplaced the batteries somewhere – but if that is the intended way for this game to be played, it really should be mentioned somewhere.
The rate at which events happen is far too fast. I am constantly being hit by this disaster or other, and there is at once too much happening and not nearly enough information. Pausing should help in theory, but is it just me, or do the menus suddenly become even less reliable when the game is paused? Even if that was not the case though, a way to set different rates would help a lot.
Given the large volume of speech, it is great that there is a mute option, although if possible, control would be a more natural choice for that than t. But unless I am missing something, once the speech is skipped, that’s it. There is no way to go back through the history and quickly check which events have taken place. Not that I’d even have the time to do that as it is, granted.
So, here’s an honest question for the developer: how much time have you spent actually play-testing your game without looking at it? It is clear you have put in a lot of effort, but was closing your eyes or covering them with a blindfold a part of that at all? Not that doing so would be the best way to check if the game is accessible – presumably you’re sighted, so if anything, you might have trouble with things that would be very easy for us. But in this case, it would’ve been an easy way to spot the obvious issues.
If you decide to continue developing this game, I encourage you to do some research into how other developers have handled large amounts of information in similar kinds of strategy games. I especially recommend checking out the games from Aprone, chiefly Castaways, whose speed settings, message buffers, settings for disabling notifications of kinds of events, shortcuts to check various stats, sound effects, etc. might be good strategies to copy. But really, you should just play all of them, because they’re very good games! And I’m confident yours could be too, once you make it playable.
Oh, another fishing game. Yay, I’m so excited about pressing the key it tells me to when it tells me to. I suppose I’ll just have to make this fun for myself somehow. Say, what happens if I just never let go of this key?
“You should be fishing, not hurting.”
Oh. I … did not expect to get called out by a fishing game today. But … thank you.
It’s the little details like this that make this game stand out for me. The sound design’s alright, the gameplay works, but the fish! The otherwordly fish! Not to mention the great sense of humour, witty but never mean-spirited. If you ever update this game to fix the bugs and add a little more I will pay you for it.
And the narration! I was so sad when I read it’s done by ElevenLabs, because I’d already written a sentence congratulating you for excellent voice acting. Fuck, the machines really will replace us soon. But at least they’ll gently tell us stories about fishing on a vaguely eldrich shore beforehand. Perhaps that’s not such a bad way to go.
Speaking of, I’m impressed with the story you managed to tell between the lines of this seemingly simple fishing game. Who are we playing as? Why is this person fishing ig in the dark? Are they there of their own free will or being compelled to do it? Why do they die/fall unconscious when their rod breaks? I genuinely want to know the answers to these questions.
Not that the game is perfect. In addition to the bug you’re already aware of, I’m pretty sure that the minigame where you have to press the key in the opposite direction of the fish’s sound isn’t quite working right; I keep killing the poor protagonist. The one where you have to reel the fish in only when it isn’t struggling gave me trouble at first, because I kept waiting for it to tire out before realising that no, it wouldn’t, I had to reel it in during the short pauses. It also wouldn’t hurt if there was a proper menu where you could move in both directions, using enter or space to select an option instead. But over all, this is the start of something beautiful, and I really hope you keep working on it.
Welcome [to] Keyboard Master. Unless we are the keyboard master; perhaps there is a comma there that my TTS simply is not reading.
I am sorry, these are just the sorts of things I can’t help but ponder after hearing the intro over and over and over. For a game that lasts just 10 seconds, that kind of wait time can get annoying quickly.
I am not sure what to say about this game. I suppose it does work? Not too much I can get excited about, however.
On the positive side, the use of the Nato Phonetic Alphabet means that all the letters are clearly understandable. B and d might sound similar on some voices, but bravo and delta certainly do not. People unfamiliar with that alphabet might have trouble at first, but it is easy enough to learn. Also, the game correctly respects that I am using a QWERTZ keyboard! Awesome!
Now for the negatives: there is a slight bit of lag between entering a letter and it being confirmed, then some more time until the next letter is announced. I may not have played far enough, but so far I have not noticed any increase in speeed in later levels, either. Over all the gameplay does not feel smooth, and when it expects me to have super fast reflexes (which I admittedly don’t), it better be fast, too!
I also managed to trigger a weird bug where the game kept registering ghost key presses. I alt+tabbed out of the window while the intro was going on to see if I could adjust the speech rate somehow, and when I returned, the game decided it had enough of my bullshit and would rather play itself. Which would be rude but forgiveable, if only it weren’t so bad at it.
I really want to continue my trend of writing grumpy Monday reviews. Perhaps there is something I could say about the game being too short, or not complex enough, or …
Ah never mind. Has cats, best game, 5/5
Jokes aside, this game really does do a lot right, especially for something made on a time limit. The interface is simple, accessible, and just over all works. The sound design is lovely, and the volumes are perfect as well; I often have to lower the sounds in text-based games because they interfeer with reading, but that is not the case here. The story, though short, is effective at getting the plot accross and even more effective at pulling at heart strings. And most importantly, the game is complete! I do not have access to your roadmap, so perhaps there are a lot of things you needed to cut, but you’ve successfully made a lovely finished product.
The biggest complaint I can think of is about the calling option; having to press a button to call and then another one to listen seems unnecessary. I suppose you could argue it adds suspense, but that same break is not present when you do find the kitten. Also, I believe “surprising” was typoed in the bathroom, but with the writing being quite good over all, that is easily forgiveable.
It’s fish.
Is this important? No. Am I being needlessly pedantic? Yes. But … it’s fish! The messy, confusing, and frankly absolutely stupid rules for pluralising nouns in English are very important to me!
Hahaha, alright, now to the real review.
The voice acting is not half bad! It sounds like you actually did your best to record it yourself, rather than just using AI. It does mean that the mom and daughter sound quite similar but ah well, it’s a jam entry. But why, why did you have to ruin that by having random TTS lines mixed in? Would it really have taken that much time to record those? The inconsistancy makes it feel far more unfinished than even doing everything in TTS would.
Fishing minigames are notorious for not being fun, so you set quite a challenge for yourself. However, I still think there are several things you could have done to make this more interesting. Less awkward movement, timed events, a relaxing ambience to make waiting around seem worth it, etc. As it is, holding right arrow until I’m told to stop, pressing space, waiting and pressing space again does make for a perfectly functional game, but not a very fun one.
I am glad our music teacher was chill and did not require much of us, but it does mean that I am completely hopeless at this game. That said, I am sure it is more fun for those actually into classical music.
The current selection system works, but is a touch inefficient, as you need to learn what the keys mean this time before each level. Perhaps that is also meant to be part of the memory challenge? If not, a simple menu would’ve done the job just as well.
Then again, if you want to really lean into the memory angle, you could always assign a unique key for each composer. If any wonderfully-talented musical nerds get that far, they can enjoy juggling the double challenge of guessing and remembering which one of the twelve keys they ought to press!
As others have said, great music, and for the most part great sound design as well – and that tiny ocean should be an easy fix! The accessibility is perfect, though with RenPy having self-voicing built in, hopefully that did not take up too much of your time.
The speech is what it is, not much you can do there. That said, for any player confused about how to change or adjust the voice used, press windows+r and type in: %windir%\sysWOW64\speech\SpeechUX\SAPI.cpl
The gameplay is alright so far, exactly what you’d expect out of a visual novel. The examine and move menus remind me of old text adventures, and I look forward to future chapters, which will no doubt add countless items we will need to combine in ways both reasonable and completely wrong. :P However, I found having to re-open the Examine menu every single time annoying, so it would be lovely if the game kept track of where you were. I still think that even with the limitations of visual novels, the lines still could have been longer.
The writing is alright, but not without mistakes. If you decide to continue with the project, I recommend you take the time to proofread it and catch the awkward phrasing and first and second person mixups here and there. Make sure to read the text aloud; you’ll catch a lot more mistakes that way!
The game seems to assume you have a QWERTY keyboard even when you do not, which caused a couple misses in the beginnign before I figured it out.
Granted, I decided not long after that actually, a far better way to play would be to just smash keys at random, so humanity would not be safe in my hands regardless.
I agree with the others that the letters aren’t always clear enough. A better solution might be to ask players to spell out increasingly complex words instead, though homophones would still need to be avoided.
I would have appreciated at least a basic tutorial (preferably not in that awful voice; what did you even do to butcher it so, record every single word separately?). Sure, there are the controls in the options menu, except regardless of what I press, I cannot get them to read out, much less change them (I suppose the controls would’ve told me how to do that?)
All the songs do is lead me into a wall, and so far the dog hasn’t been much help either. I believe the J key might do something, though what exactly I have no idea.
There is no indication of when there is empty space or a wall to my left or right, nor is there a way to sidestep, so I have been running into a wall, turning, taking a step, turning, running into a wall … not very fun, let’s just say.
I am not one of the developers, but — since it is unlikely an update will come out any time soon, not until Episode 4 is released — perhaps I can help you get past this part so that you can continue playing? You are the first person I have heard of that has gotten this bug, so if you upload your save file (such as on a cloud storage service like Nextcloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.), I should be able to obtain that piece of information and return the updated file to you. If I recall correctly, there is no special scene you would miss.
If you would like that, you can find your save file (at least if you are using Windows) here: C:\Users[USERNAME]\AppData\LocalLow\GoodwolfStudio\Code 7\saveFiles
For future questions, you might get a response more quickly if you joined the game’s Discord server: https://discord.gg/code 7 . Even that one is mostly inactive but Itch is much more so; it is pure luck that I saw your topic.
I hope that you are enjoying the game so far, and will be able to continue to! :)
I checked, and got the same hash as you. Zein, one of the developers, had the same result. The file size here is 9 kb as well, so I suppose the size difference is only there because the version of the game in the demo is an older one.
I’ve uploaded the plugin, if you’d like to replace it and test if something changes. But it seems to be the same one. https://cloud.owncube.com/s/Bw2Bi43jZMziGoZ
Most people who have reported this mentioned they’d recently freshly installed Windows, but I don’t see how that could be the problem, unless Microsoft no longer ships some SAPI components with Windows 10 that it once used to. The required dependencies are kernel32.dll, ole32.dll and msvcr120.dll. But so far people we’ve asked about this do have those files, and I assume you will, too.
Sorry to sound like a Microsoft support person, but … could you try to perform a system check? Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as typing system.check in the console, but for a Microsoft help guide, this is surprisingly useful: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929833/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system
Unfortunately, several people have had issues with this. The developers did look into it, but could not find any reason for it not to work, and suspect this might somehow be a windows issue. But I don’t think anyone checked the size of the plugin before, perhaps that is indeed important somehow.
Some people experiencing this issue were able to get around it by running the game as admin and in compatibility mode. If you have the game unpacked somewhere else at the moment, it might also help if you moved it to Program Files (x86) and then gave it the appropriate permissions.
You can check if your SAPI works fine otherwise by pressing windows+r, pasting in c:\windows\system32\control.exe then navigating with tab and enter to Ease of Access, Speech Recognition, Text to Speech. But it’s probably going to work there just fine.
Since you bought the game on here, you now have a DRM-free copy that you can take with you anywhere. So if nothing can be figured out, I hope you can manage to borrow someone’s computer. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. :(
