you need to unzip the downloaded file, go into the folder that appears (named clay_transforming), then select the "assets" folder, json, and icon files and create a zip file with those, then rename the new zip file to the name of the original zip file

if you did it correctly, you should be able to double click on the new zip file and see that "assets", the mod json, and icon files appear within; delete the original downloaded and unzipped files and move that new zip file you made into VS's mods folder, then hit the "reload mods" button within VS

I'm trying to fix the mod being unable to load but  I can't seem to get it to work.

As far as I can tell it's not loading because the base folder is empty. Just move the files from the folder in the zip to the base folder and zip it up again.

Can't load the mod - are there any known compatibility conflicts or dependencies? 

ClemFoss