For no disernible reason the game suddenly phases out and displays the desktop. The sound keeps going but I can't alt-tab back to the game. It sometimes displays an error message saying that it could not switch to any resolution.


I'm using an alienware 13, i5 version, with an NVIDIA 970 videocard and windows 8 as an OS.

Are you using a Graphics Amplifier with the Alieware 13 or do you have two GPUs present in your laptop? If so, try forcing the game to only use one of them.

Amplifier.

There's a novelty in this, however. After waiting for 2 minutes or so the game goes back to normal by itself.

Still kind of annoying, though. Albeit I am not sure anymore that this is a Blackguards problem. Other games (eg: Kronos) did this as well, but in those the hiccup lasted 4-5 seconds so I did not pay it any attention.

Close all applications, tools running in background (check the taskbar icons) and also anit-virus software for testing. Maybe one of them is interfering. That the game comes back after some time looks like a timeout. A program waits for something, a resource or a server answer etc. and gives back control after a certain time not receiving it. Also disconnect your network cable and turn off wireless-LAN. This might prevent network timeouts as there isn't any connection in the first place.