Dang, a few people have had this problem with the exe not launching. I haven’t used Avast, but maybe adding game’s exe file to Avast’s exemption list would help? Otherwise I’m not sure.
Turned off Avast and got the game working. Turned it back on, and after trying to read a sign, the ransomware shield was alerted because the .exe is trying to delete a file. It's a .wav file, in this case. Guess it has something to do with how the sound system was programmed!
