I get the feeling this game was only ever tested on the computers the developers happened to have in the studio, and that they were all the exact same hardware and software config. Making a game use the CPU clock as a timer was recognized as a bad practice at least as much as a decade earlier, when they started having to equip PCs with turbo buttons. Doing that in a way that makes it unclear what the "correct" clock speed even is, coupled with dodgy optimization that makes the game start to run slow unless you have a faster machine than the recommended one... that's just unforgivable. That should get you sent back to flipping burgers.
I did some quick digging on the studio behind it, Data Design Interactive. Turns out they're the same ones behind those awful cookie-cutter Wii and PS2 games from the late 2000s that are basically all reskins of each other—The Ninjabread Man, Trixie in Toyland, and such. That explains a lot.