Windows/Linux and Node

I'm trying to collab with a guy and he's developed his web app using Node on LINUX and I am using Node on Windows 10. For some reason, when I try to launch his server, his package.json didn't have like half of his dependencies listed and I keep having to go and add in things like async, moment, etc... In addition, I'm stuck between this ridiculous error which says that I must use strict-mode because the code contains a let statement, which is a block-scoped declaration and can only be used in strict-mode. But when I run strict-mode, Node then says I can't launch the server because bcrypt is trying to use an octal literal which cannot be used in strict-mode LOL. So I'm literally stuck between a rock and a hard place, but the author of the code says it runs fine on his linux VM.

I don't know if you know this but node looks for the required modules up the directory tree and. I use virtual box and Ubuntu server w/o gui to run my apps but share the folder with windows so I can access the code with an editor however it won't let me install modules in that folder so I install them one folder up.

So basically, does Ubuntu come with project dependencies my default that I don't have because I'm on Windows? I'm kinda confused on what's happening and how I may be able to get this thing operational. The thing is, I'd prefer to avoid running a Linux VM. I got enough software eating up my space and memory as it is.

Obviously, you can't help me with this particular project's code. But in general, I'm trying to get some advice on how you would handle a situation where this kind of thing is happening: you download a project to work on it, and essentially, you are getting all kinds of dependency and strict-mode errors. Is there any sort of "hard reset" i can do to fix this?