Help with unresponsive Almond Collective games

[Dawn097]

Hello! Thought only the most degen of degens might have this kind of deep insight.

I own a few Almond Collective games. They used to run no problem. I recently tried running one.
The game will launch, but will freeze 100% of the time in 2 instances:

1. In "Story" mode, where all of the scenes auto-play in order: every time the game needs to go from 1 video segment to the other, it will freeze.
2. In "Select" mode, where you can choose scenes and their order: anytime I hover over a video segment then move the mouse cursor away, it will freeze.

I have to close the game by ending task with Task Manager, because it's completely unresponsive.

I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling, re-downloading the games (purchased them from DLsite, the DL links are still available) and updating drivers.
I have tried to run them with every compatibility mode and additional option, even mixed & matched them.
No avail. The games keep freezing.

Has this happened to anyone? If so, have you been able to fix this issue? How?

I'm running windows 11 - RTX 3070ti - 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-13700K

 

[Dawn097]

...of course, only once I come in here and make a post, I find a solution ~30 minutes later... after having tried 100 different things over the course of 13 hours.

I downloaded some "mega pack" of codecs and it fixed everything.

In my desperation, I looked at random threads about other games having crashing issues and turns out, it worked for these as well. So if anyone ever has this problem, download some codecs I guess.