Insomnia: The Ark Screen Resolution Bug Fix

As much as I like Insomnia: The Ark, it’s currently full of aggravating, sometimes game-breaking, bugs and glitches. 

One particularly nagging issue appears when you set your screen resolution to something higher than 1920×1080. Doing so has several consequences, none of which are ideal. This is especially true if you’re playing on a 2K or 4K monitor. 

When you start Insomnia: The Ark, the game automatically chooses the “best” screen resolution for your display. But on higher resolution monitors, that’s never true 2K or 4K.

Naturally, you’ll try fixing that only to find one of the following:

• You can’t click on the in-game menu at all
• Your mouse cursor is confined to a 1920×1080 box in-game
• Your cursor moves outside the game window and opens desktop apps, etc. 

Although this glitch was supposed to be patched by launch day, players are still running into it. In this quick guide, I’ll lay out a way to get around this issue in a few simple steps. The only downside is that you still won’t be able to get 2K or 4K resolutions until an official patch is released. 

How to Fix Insomnia: The Ark‘s Screen Resolution Issue

Your best bet is this: don’t change the default resolution the game chooses when you boot up for the very first time. That completely circumvents the glitch. 

However, there’s a chance you already changed your resolution, that’s why you’re here. If you have, you might find going back to 1920×1080 doesn’t fix anything at all.

The solution is to set the game to fullscreen [in window].

You can also try to re-config the game’s .ini file in order to create a custom resolution in either windowed or fullscreen mode. However, the Steam users that have tried this have not had success. 

I’ve Changed Resolution But I’m Still Stuck

There’s also a chance you’ve changed the resolution by following the steps above OR chosen 1920×1080 fullscreen only to find you can’t click anything at all. That’s because Insomnia is registering a specific 1920×1080 window somewhere on your monitor — but the in-game menu isn’t in the same area of the screen. 

To get past this, hit “F11”. By default, this will window the game further. You’ll see the game window and your desktop. Now do the following: 

• Find the invisible box 
  • Mine was in the upper left quadrant as seen above
• Pull the Insomnia window into the invisible box
• Reset the resolution to 1920×1080 and fullscreen [in window]

As of this writing, these are the only current fixes for Insomnia‘s screen resolution bug when using a 2K or 4K monitor. The developers are aware of this display glitch and are currently working on a patch per notes I received with the game’s review code. 

However, there is no firm date on when that official patch will arrive. Until then, you simply won’t be able to play the game at anything higher than 1080p.