The camera blur setting is, indeed, a band-aid fix, but it is only used by the functions called when opening chests, boons, or popup hints, so no other game mechanics are impacted.
I've never been able to reproduce this issue myself, not on any of my devices, which makes me think this is a device- or platform-specific problem. Until I'm able to do that, the best I can do is introduce a setting that gives affected players a workaround.
> just removing the camera or screen blur from locked chests seems simple enough without removing it entirely.
Hey! Thank you for playing the game and I'm glad I was able to make something you enjoy :)
"train Darkness in the sexual art of torture and roleplay" requirement refers to the status of your romantic relationship with Darkness. In the event prior to "Prisoner of War", you would've seen a choice with a heart (romantic) and a broken heart (ignore her), and I'm afraid if the requirement is not fulfilled you might have chosen the latter, which locks you out of all the romantic scenes with her.
You could use a cheat code to change that, although that might result in some unintended consequences and narrative inconsistencies, since you're already quite far in the story
You shouldn't be seeing file loading issues, implying you've got a corrupted build. Instead of applying a version specific patch over it, I recommend trying to redownload the game.
AFAIK Spark uses its own Ren'Py distro, which is not what this game uses. I've made extensive changes to the underlying engine and Spark doesn't support that
Make sure to load into a save without an active adventure going on. It is a technical limitation currently, those saves can't be patched when switching to a new version.
