Heya!
Cry of Fear is no longer being worked on, so we won't be able to make any changes or fixes. If memory serves, we added the launcher to improve the games stability and make it easier to update before it was added to steam. You might run the risk of making the game more prone to crashes by running it directly from the executable as it's not meant to be started that way. I'm not sure if it's even possible to do so at this point.
The light in the game sounds more like a local issue. Have you tried increasing the brightness either ingame or on your monitor?
