Sorry to hear that. For the bug I'll find a save near there to try to reproduce the problem.

So you zipped the lsv file in the save folder, rather than the folder itself? Otherwise the zip should not have been deleted.

Do you have any recent backups of your my Documents folder, where you may be able to recover an earlier version of the save?

Some versions of Windows have a 'Shadow Copy' feature that can automatically keep older versions of files. You can try right clicking the Profile's Story folder, select Properties and (if available) switch to the 'Previous Versions' tab to see if there are any previous copies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Copy

You could try a file recovery program such as Recuva, but the more you use the computer after files are deleted, the less likely they will be recoverable.
https://www.piriform.com/recuva

For the Steam version, if you had cloud saves enabled, you can check in the Steam install folder, in addition to My Documents, since Steam keeps a copy of the profile and saves there, which it uses when syncing online.


You can check / download / delete online saves for the Steam version with the program Steam Cloud File Manager Lite, but Steam usually syncs when exiting the game, and if not should when restarting, so the online save likely share the fate of the local version. You need to be logged in to the Steam client and have the game's AppID (435150).

https://github.com/GMMan/SteamCloudFileManagerLite

https://github.com/GMMan/SteamCloudFileManagerLite/releases/download/v1.0.0.0-alpha-1/Release.zip