Oh man. I was afraid of that. I emailed the developer last night, as well, but haven't heard back yet. I'll check out that saved game site, Rushes. It's not even a matter of things continuing to not work further on into the game; I'm at the point where I can't do what needs to be done to move forward. At least I'm only in Chapter 2. Thanks for the help!

Update: I downloaded a save from that site but it won't show up in my "load game" list when I start the game. Do I need to go post in the Glitches forum? I don't see a file in the game directory that has a list of the games I've saved so I'm assuming it's saving the games to elsewhere on my drive and I'm not looking in the right place.
And to answer your earlier question - no, nothing in my inventory goes into "examine" mode.