Make sure your graphics card supports the game and that you have updated drivers
Because SOMA uses OpenGL, your graphics card may not support the minimum version required or your drivers may be outdated even though you can run most other games (which use Direct3D). In order to learn more visit the Graphics Card Troubleshooting Guide.
Make sure the game is updated
Reset the game settings
Sometimes changes you have made can cause problems with the game. In order to fix this you need to reset the game's settings. Go to the game's save directory and remove the [username]_user_settings.cfg file. Then start the game and try playing the first level without changing any options. If all works, you can exit the game and carefully change a few settings at a time. The save directories are mentioned below.
- Vista, 7 & 8.x: Documents\My Games\SOMA
- Linux: ~/.local/share/frictionalgames/SOMA
- Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Frictional Games/SOMA
Background program interferences
Background program interference
Sound device is not found
Bad file permissions
Sometimes the game might crash because of bad file permissions. To fix this, run as Administrator (Windows Vista, 7 & 8.x) or set so SOMA executable has write permission on the install directory.
Wrong display settings
Make sure that your display supports the resolution you set at the launcher and that your desktop color depth is set to 32-bit. Also, make sure your DPI is set to default 100%.
Visual Studio runtime dlls
These should be installed when you start the game the first time, but in rare cases it might fail. You might even have to uninstall the runtimes first and then install them again. Before you do this, make sure that your OS is 64 bit.
Download the latest Windows runtime dlls here:
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x64)
Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x64)