Tiny Eden won't launch: what to check first

Start with what the game does when you press Play

Launch problems on the Steam board fall into a few groups, and the fix depends on which one you have. The table lists what each group looks like, what the threads say caused it, and who said it, so a developer reply is not mixed up with a player's guess.

None of these is an official troubleshooting guide. The developers answer one thread at a time, and in several of them they ask for the same thing: your system details, and whether you are on Windows or Linux.

Error 0x11C7 and Smart App Control

In a thread opened on 9 September, a player on Windows 11 with Smart App Control enabled wrote that Windows blocked the game with an application control policy message and error code 0x11C7, even after verifying the game files. The developers' first reply was that it was new to them, and that a temporary fix was an exclusion for Tiny Eden in Windows Security, so Smart App Control would not have to be switched off.

A later developer answer explains the error and gives the simplest route. It affects Windows 11 only, they say, because Smart App Control does not exist in Windows 10, and it hits Steam games quite often with no pattern. Three players in two threads reported the game working again afterwards.

1. 1

   Step 1: Open Smart App Control

   Press the Windows key, type Smart App Control and press Enter, the developers say.

2. 2

   Step 2: Switch it off

   If it is set to Evaluation or On, change it to Off.

3. 3

   Step 3: Or set an exception

   The developers say Tiny Eden can be set as an exception instead, but that other games with this error report turning it off as the easiest fix. One player, unsure of the exact path, named the Tiny Eden folder inside Steam's steamapps common folder.

4. 4

   Step 4: Start the game again

   Players in both threads wrote that it launched after the change.

Continuing a demo or playtest save

A player whose game shut down two or three minutes in, every time, wrote that the demo had not done this. The developers asked whether they had started a new game or continued, and added a note shortly afterwards: a game carried over from the demo or the playtest will crash, or be hugely bugged.

That matches the save rules already on the site: saves from before version 0.10.0 are not supported, and demo saves do not work. The pages on saves that vanish and on the demo save rule cover the details.

Linux, Proton and the graphics card

On launch day a Linux player reported that the native build crashed at launch while the Windows build under Proton ran fine, and the developers replied that they would check it as soon as possible. Two weeks on, a player whose A, S and D keys did nothing was told to run the game under Proton instead, because a few bugs remain in the native version.

Which Proton to pick is a player question. One player fixed a crash by setting Proton Experimental in the game's properties. Another had Proton 9.0-4 crash within a second, and reported that Proton Hotfix worked.

Steam's Linux notes add a hardware line that the Windows listing does not have. They say the game does not start on GPUs or drivers without mesh shader support. The game's own saves also live in different folders on Linux, covered on the save file page.

Intel Arc

The developers' reply to a player whose game started and then closed was a question: are you using an Intel Arc graphics card? On 21 September they asked a second player the same thing and called it known to have issues.

No fix or date has been published. If you are on Arc, the threads offer nothing beyond the developers' own admission, so report your setup rather than reinstalling.

What to send when you report it

In the game, press Esc and choose Report a bug. Since Update #8 a report includes a snapshot of your save from the moment the problem happened, which matters for crashes that only happen in one save. See the patch notes page for what else changed, and the older demo crash page for the reports from before launch.

In several Steam threads the developers ask for the same details, so put them in your first post.

• Processor, graphics card and RAM
• Windows or Linux, and if Linux, whether native or Proton
• Whether the save is a new game or carried over from the demo or playtest
• Whether Smart App Control is on, if Windows shows an application control message

Frequently asked

What is error 0x11C7 in Tiny Eden?

The developers say it is Windows Security or Smart App Control blocking the game, and that it affects Windows 11 only. Turning Smart App Control off, or setting an exception for Tiny Eden, got three players running again.

Does Tiny Eden run natively on Linux?

A native build exists, but the developers ask Linux players to run the Windows build under Proton because of bugs in the native version.

Why does the game crash a few minutes in?

One cause the developers named is continuing a game from the demo or the playtest. They say to start a new game.

Does Tiny Eden work on Intel Arc?

The developers say it has known issues on Intel Arc and that a fix is proving hard. No date has been given.