my question is why on earth would windows 1o have a incompatiable version of openAl32.dll in the first place.
Because Windows 10 has "the latest" version,
the game was made to use an older version,
and "the latest" version is not 100% backward compatible.
my computer plays all of my other games just fine.
I think most adventure games do not use OpenAL.
I think it is a relatively new thing for adventure games. Its advantage is that it makes games that have enhanced audio easier to port to other OS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openal