Running .exe to get String output is not saving to string variable - powershell

Question

Forgive me, I am new to PowerShell in general. I'm updating a build process that works on Linux (in bash) to one that will work on Windows in PowerShell.
My goal is to get the version of the game engine currently present on the build system. The default build location is well-known, so we try to execute it and get the version, like so:
$Version = & 'C:\Program Files\LOVE\love.exe' --version
When this executes, the $Version value is empty:
Write-Output $Version
[no output]
$Version -Eq $True
False
If I run my executable directly from the shell, I notice the line is not presented on a newline:
PS C:\Users\robbm\Myproject\Mygame> $Version = & 'C:\Program Files\LOVE\love.exe' --version
PS C:\Users\robbm\Myproject\Mygame> LOVE 11.3 (Mysterious Mysteries)
This makes me suspect there is some strange output behavior with the executable in the first place.
Is this a problem with LÖVE's --version output, or am I misunderstanding something about redirecting outputs in PowerShell? I've tried a few things to capture output, and $Version always seems to end up a nil value, such as:
$Version = & '\\build\love\love.exe' '--version' | Out-String
Write-Output $Version
$Version = (& '\\build\love\love.exe' '--version' | Out-String)
Write-Output $Version
Help is appreciated. As this works for other cmdlets, I'm inclined to believe it might be a function of LÖVE, but I'd appreciate thoughts as to how I could work with this anyway, or any method in which to capture the version it's clearly outputting to the screen when I execute it directly regardless.
EDIT:
LÖVE definitely does something different in regards to running on Windows. Looking at the version printing source, we are working with the aptly-named LOVE_LEGENDARY_CONSOLE_IO_HACK enabled on Windows, which appears to open a new console entirely, perhaps in cmd and write out there.
Doing the suggestions of commenters, I tried doing the .Exception.Message method, but there is none when called like so:
$Version = &('C:\Program Files\LOVE\love.exe' '--version').Exception.Message
So I'm still looking for ways to make this work within the confines of LÖVE hacking together some strange I/O stream.
EDIT2:
Another fun fact, redirection to a file similarly fails:
PS> (&'C:\Program Files\LOVE\love.exe' '--version') 2>&1 > .\love.txt
PS> LOVE 11.3 (Mysterious Mysteries)
PS> cat .\love.txt
[empty]
So this looks to be overly hacky on behalf of LÖVE, not an issue with PowerShell.

Answer 1

After reading your last edit, this probably won't help you, but may help others.
You could try to capture the output like this:
function runCmdAndCaptureOutput(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
[string] $cmd
) {
[string] $errOut
[string] $stdOut
# Deliberately dropped '$' from vars below.
Invoke-Expression $cmd -ErrorVariable errOut -OutVariable stdOut
if($LASTEXITCODE -ne 0) {
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red "LASTEXITCODE: $LASTEXITCODE"
throw $LASTEXITCODE
}
return $stdOut
}
$exeCmd = "'C:\Program Files\LOVE\love.exe' --version"
$output = runCmdAndCaptureOutput -cmd $exeCmd
Write-Host $output