I have replicated the black screen problem myself on a laptop I have which had only windows 10 20h2 installed, and yes you must have Visual C++ 2015 x86 runtime to be able to play the game, otherwise you'll see the black screen issue but the play goes on until you reach Isabella and you have to choose the first card (if you play the introduction) but you can't choose anything.
If you haven't Visual C++ 2015 x86 runtime and you skip the introduction you'll only see that Julia says some senteces but the program stacks at the sentence "Why don't you find the lobby and click on its icon to go there?"
I have seen that someone has added the Black screen Fix inside Installation Section, I think that no one will read it if it stays there, is better to put it outside the Installation instructions.
Faerin: can't you write in the startup game screen that Visual C++ x86 runtime is a must have to play the game? Probably we can lower the black screen issue or freezing problem that people continue to say?
EDIT: I have also tried with Visual C++ 2015-2019 x86 and the games works correctly. If you have only any x64 version it doesn't work. The latest Visual C++ 2015-2019 x86 version can be downloaded from
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or if anyone wants the latest version of Visual C++ Runtime can go to this
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.