The game is a black screen at launch.

[MadMel62]

I got my mother this game a little while ago and she has never been able to play it. I've just now looked over the discussion board and tried to mend the problem but I'm not quite sure what the issue is. Her PC has the proper spect to run this game; It's ran other higher spec point and click series without any issue. So if someone could recomend some ideas as to how I'd go about fixing this, that would be great. I'll check this discussion as often as I can.

[Skarp Hulduson]

I also "enjoy" the black screen version of this game. Max OS 10.10.3 here, with hardware way over spec.

[Absurd Logic]

Is it black screening and freezing your whole computer, or can you Alt+Tab or start Task Manager?

I don't know much about Macs, but you can see if one of these helps:

1) Check that your firewall or antivirus is not blocking it. Some games launch before you can click "Allow" for a firewall request, which can lead to a black screen while it waits for the green light. That's been the culprit most of the time in my experience, so I just manually add a rule/exception to make it a trusted program. It usually fixes the problem right off the bat.

2) Launch in windowed mode. I had a similar issue with FEZ, but adding -w or -window to the launch options fixed it. You can also try pressing Alt+Enter when it first launches.

3) Turn off Steam Overlay.

4) If you have EVGA Precision X running in the background, try turning it off.

5) If you're on Vista or Windows 8, try running it in Windows 7 compatability mode (and run as administrator).

6) Find the folder with your profile/game settings and delete the files. (On Windows 7 it will probably be in C:\Users\YourName\AppData\LocalLow\SDPGames\Melissa K_ ) They'll be recreated when you relaunch the game.

7) Manual uninstall/reinstall: delete everything in the Melissa K. Steam folder, verify integrity of game cache (it will redownload everything), reboot, restart Steam.

8) Update your video card drivers. Also make sure DirectX is up-to-date (don't rely on game installers to update it for you - grab the latest version directly from the website).

9) Open your video card control panel and fiddle with the settings. Try disabling PhysX Acceleration or letting the software decide on the best settings.

Hopefully one of those works. It's also possible you're not giving it enough time to launch. I've seen games take ages to launch for the first time, and I was just too impatient to wait at first.

[Skarp Hulduson]

Turning off the Steam overlay fixed the problem. I thought I had already done that, as it has solved similar problems with other games.

I also added -w to the launch options, but I doubt that helped with anything, because the game started in fullscreen mode anyway.

[Eyereen]

Do not launch the game out of the steam app,try using the desktop shortcut,that did it for me.