I was playing on win10, and I ended up solving the issue: The game wasn't opening when I clicked the exe at the start of me playing it so i clicked it like 5 times and they've been in the background this entire time lol oops!!
It finally opened but the other 4 have just been chilling in the background of my PC even after I closed the game so I don't know how but they were cock blocking me from accessing my saves when I opened the game again. I restarted my PC and my saves are all there... Excited to continue playing the game has been great so far!