For a game about the game development process I find it kind of fitting you need to run obscure commands from the internet to get it to work on a modern computer.

Here are those commands:

Windows 11

Press Windows + R to open the Run dialog.

Type in msconfig and click “OK”. This opens “System Configuration”.

Select the “Boot” tab.

Click “Advanced Options…”

In the new popup window check the “Number of processors” box and from the dropdown choose “8”, then click “OK” to close this window.

Now click “Apply” and then “OK”.

You must restart your computer for this to take effect. Afterwards the game should start without crashing.

Remember to undo this after playing the game as this fix has temporarily lowered the performance of your computer. It is not permanent and will not cause any damage, but you will struggle running as many apps and tabs in your browser while you have the fix applied.

Linux

It’s a lot easier to do this in Linux. You don’t need to reboot after, you can limit the change to apply only to The Beginner’s Guide, not the rest of your system, and you don’t need to remember to turn it off after.

Wine/Proton

Use the WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY environment variable to limit the processors to 8:

WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY=8:0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7

Steam

In Steam right click the game and choose “Properties”.

In “General” for the “Launch Options” use

WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY=8:0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7 %command%

Other launchers

Steam is the only launcher I’ve tested this on.

For Lutris, Heroic or Bottles you need to set an environment variable using that launcher’s config for the game.

Credits

Thanks to Gameplay.tips for the Windows guide, fleakuda for linking to it, and everyone who contributes to ProtonDB, especially ShatteredScales for the Wine environment variable.