Game crashes at 80% loading

[Existential_Crisis.exe]

Any game I try to load (new game, autosave, manual save, 'continue' game) crashes when it gets to 80% loaded.
I've tried deleting old saves, updating Steam, updating the game, updating Windows and graphics card drivers etc.... No dice!
Been playing this game since April and this has never happened before. No mods.

Does anyone else have this issue/know how I could solve it?

[Pathea Customer Service]

Dear player, so sorry for the inconvenience. Have you used any mod or CE before? They could cause problem like that. Please check and delete them and try again.

[Pathea Customer Service]

Another possibility is that the graphics card driver is not updated, resulting in the graphics card not being running when the game starts.

[kittyalliance]

I had a different issue when playing offline (game status in the Steam client said "running" but the game never became visible). I tried the solution in this post, and it worked: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1937500/discussions/0/7098294773564569983/

The solution was to delete the GameSettings.json file at C:\Users\[username]\AppData\LocalLow\Pathea Games\LetsSchool\Settings\GameSettings.json

eta: never used mods; this started after I accidentally had the game running once when I was online. I normally only play offline. After that one time online, it wouldn't start offline.

[kittyalliance]

Well, it just happened again and Steam has only been in offline mode.

1. I had changed some settings the last time that I played, so there was once again a GameSettings.json.

2. I deleted GameSettings.json and tried to load the game: still didn't work.

3. Restarted computer and now it is once again running well.

eta: If it helps, the setting that I changed was the one that allows the mouse to change the angle of viewing. No other settings were changed.

[Existential_Crisis.exe]

Thank you both for the replies!
I'm not sure what changed but the game is working fine again now for all game types!