I did some digging around — I liked this game a ton — and may have found an identity-trail leading to contact information for the author. (That said, if it’s a GM/Win8 issue, there might be little he can do.)

It looks like he had a twitter account under the same user name as his now-dormant tigsource account (confirmed here), but it’s since been disabled.

Favstar, however, still remembers the name associated with the account here.

And searching under that full name (though not particularly thoroughly) leads to a promising GitHub account here, last active three days ago checking in changes on a Java game engine. There’s an email address on that page (though a student/academic one, so who knows how far into the future that’ll last).

Incidentally, the game runs fine on my end in Win7.

I know the comments likely aren’t checked much at this point, but I figured I’d at least get the issue out there, since I’m completely stumped.

So, I guess it is comfortable reserving its game design for those smart enough to figure the hidden trick.

I haven’t beaten it yet but I’ll definitely give it another shot !