Bower - same bower version, same bower.json, not working on different machine (diff. nodejs version)

Update: this is now solved - just install the node-legacy package. This can also solve problems installing npm modules, e.g. websocket, which report This failure might be due to the use of legacy binary "node".

I'm following a procedure to install an app from github. I can get it working on my machine, but not on a VPS, using identical commands.

The first step, downloading the repo, works on both machines:

git clone git://github.com/jsonchess/lightsquare.git

The next step is to cd into the downloaded repo and do bower install to get the dependencies:

cd lightsquare - obviously the same effect on both machines.

Just to be sure I compared the bower.json files at this point:

md5sum bower.json
edea21a5e088824a11f039c4694fa230  bower.json

md5sum bower.json
edea21a5e088824a11f039c4694fa230  bower.json

bower install works fine on my machine:

$ bower install
bower websocket-client#*    not-cached git://github.com/gushogg-blake/websocket-client.git#*
bower websocket-client#*       resolve git://github.com/gushogg-blake/websocket-client.git#*

... some output omitted for clarity ...
... no errors ...

jsonchess#78f1b23027 bower_components/jsonchess

chess#a5729e7d8a bower_components/chess

But on the VPS bower install outputs nothing (straight back to the prompt), as does bower --version:

$ bower install
$ bower --version

$ bower --version outputs 1.3.9 on my machine.

So to compare the commands I ran, on my machine:

gus@mint lightsquare$ which bower
/usr/local/bin/bower
gus@mint lightsquare$ md5sum /usr/local/bin/bower 
018425bfa8540b0e2a3dd55480db1cf6  /usr/local/bin/bower
gus@mint lightsquare$ 

... and on the vps:

gus@jsonchess:~/projects/lightsquare$ which bower 
/usr/local/bin/bower
gus@jsonchess:~/projects/lightsquare$ md5sum /usr/local/bin/bower 
018425bfa8540b0e2a3dd55480db1cf6  /usr/local/bin/bower
gus@jsonchess:~/projects/lightsquare$ 

Obviously the bower command is the same on both machines, and it's a NodeJS program, so the only thing I can think of is some difference in the NodeJS versions. My machine is running v0.10.15 and the VPS is running v0.10.25.

Still though, I would expect some kind of error, not just silence from any bower command. Any ideas what this could be?