I continually fail to get achievements.  I read that I might have to disable cheat mode, but I don't have a cheat mode checkbox on my options screen.  

I have the same problem :/

The cheat mode checkbox only shows up if you've got a patron build, so it can be a bit tricky to uncheck it if it was already checked... on Windows, it's in Users\%User%\.prefs\tales-of-androgyny-preferences - open that file in a text editor and change <entry key="cheat">true</entry> to <entry key="cheat">false</entry>