Launching Beyond New Horizons for the first time

Prerequisites:

  • Fully downloaded Beyond New Horizons either from itch.io or via the torrent 
  • Installed Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables (x64) and DX9 Runtime (2010)

Method:

  • Once you have fully downloaded the game from itch.io, extract it to a folder of your liking on your PC, either with the Windows 11 built-in .zip compressing tool or a free tool such as 7-Zip. Note: If you downloaded the game via direct download and have not used the itch-launcher, always check if your .zip file is approximately the same size as the game size indicated on itch. This is because sometimes the itch direct download simply stops downloading in the middle of the download, saying it has finished, even though it has not.
  • Once you have successfully extracted the game, go into the main directory of the game and, before launching the game for the first time, open the engine.ini file in the main directory. Here you are now able to set the game to your monitor resolution by changing the values for screen_x and screen_y. In this context, screen_x determines the horizontal value of the resolution while screen_y determines the vertical value, meaning for example: If your monitor resolution is 1920x1080, you would input the number 1920 into the screen_x row and 1080 into the screen_y row. 
  • In this file, you can also set the game to fullscreen by changing the value in the full_screen row from 0 to 1. However, this is not recommended, as you can no longer tab out of the game if it is set to fullscreen. Note: If you have two or more monitors, it might happen that the game is not properly aligned with the monitor borders of your main monitor but rather sticks into your secondary monitor when you are launching it. In this case it might help to enable fullscreen for one launch so that the game learns the borders of your primary monitor. Afterwards, you should be able to just quit the game and turn the fullscreen back off again. The borders should stick within your primary monitor on all subsequent launches. 
  • Once you have made your changes in the engine.ini file, you can save the file and close it. Now you can start the game via the engine.exe file in the main directory of the game. If you want to create a shortcut of the game on your desktop, you can rightclick on the engine.exe file and select "send to" and then "send to desktop". Enjoy the game!

This tutorial has been made possible thanks to DH27 and Hammie.