Castlevania Belmont's Curse Demo Black Screen: 6 Fixes That Work on PC

Turn VSync on (on AMD, turn Enhanced Sync off first), drop your monitor to 120Hz or lower, and if it still boots black, quit the demo fully and relaunch. One further step covers the rest: deleting PLAYERPREFS.sav from the demo's LocalLow folder, which resets the settings it reads at startup. Back that folder up first, because the demo save is meant to carry into the full game.

Every fix here is a player report from the demo's launch-day Steam thread, checked quote by quote as of October 5, 2026. Konami has published no patch note, no known-issues list, and no acknowledgement of this problem.

Which version of this problem do you have

The thread is titled when i start demo i just have black screen, posted October 1, 2026 — the day the demo went live — and had reached 14 replies by October 5. Six of those open with "same" or "same here", one of them from a player on a Ryzen 7 5700X3D with a Sapphire Nitro RX 9070 XT.

The six fixes, ranked by how many people confirmed them

1. Turn VSync on (AMD: also turn Enhanced Sync off)

The most independently confirmed fix. Firesnake: "Turning on Vsync was the only thing that helped. This is crazy, I don't remember the last time I had issues STARTING the game." Two days earlier, ZoMBiEe, the AMD card owner: "i found a solution for my AMD card, turn off enchanced sync and turn on vertical refresh works for me" — his "vertical refresh" is a typo for vertical sync, and it is the only vendor-specific fix posted. AMD sets this in Adrenalin's AMD Sync section, NVIDIA in Control Panel under Manage 3D Settings with Vertical sync On.

2. Drop your monitor's refresh rate to 120Hz or lower

BigV, whose default was 240Hz: "Another user pointed out that you can fix it by dropping your monitor's refresh rate to 120hz or lower, and that worked for me (my default is 240hz). It's kinda weird, but you still get to play it in 120fps."

Read that last sentence carefully. Konami lists 60 fps for the PC build, so a 120 fps reading is something to check on your own screen, not a supported mode. The thread also holds a player who changed the refresh rate and got nothing from it.

3. Close the second monitor, or set the primary to 60Hz

The original poster, b1ko: "ok guys i closed my second monitor, put my first monitor on 60 hz and he works / so maybe try this". It works, but it changes two variables at once — change one at a time to learn which half matters.

4. Quit the game completely and launch it again

Lonian: "I quit the game and started again and then it works fine." A separate October 4 thread is titled If game shows up as black screen on startup and stays that way just identify files, and its single reply is "Or just restart the game."

5. Delete the settings file from the LocalLow folder

The fix most people quote, and the only one that can cost you something. Steps and the backup procedure are below — read them first.

6. Hold Shift while clicking Play, then check the taskbar

RefusalFossil, after the refresh rate change failed him: "After about 10 times I held down shift as I hit Play and the window stayed closed, but the program was open on the task bar. I then clicked on Castlevania on the task bar and the game was running. Not sure if that was just pure coincidence or not but it worked for me." A lead rather than a fix, since the poster flags his own uncertainty — but if no window appears at all, check the taskbar before concluding the demo never launched.

What each kind of machine reported

Nobody hit this on a weak machine, and no NVIDIA-specific fix exists. The only hardware named in the thread is high-end, which is why none of the six fixes touch drivers, textures or memory — and why "my PC is too weak" is the wrong diagnosis. The PC system requirements page separates what Konami has published from what it has not.

How to reset PLAYERPREFS.sav without losing your demo progress

The path, exactly as posted:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\LocalLow\KONAMI\Castlevania Belmont's Curse\PLAYERPREFS.sav

CaptainScience's note: "Where 'C' is whichever drive your AppData folder is found (usually it's just C anyway) and '[username]' is your Windows username."

1. Close the demo — check the taskbar first if unsure, since fix 6 exists because the process can outlive a closed window.
2. Paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\KONAMI\ into the Explorer address bar; typing it beats hunting for the folder, because AppData is hidden by default.
3. Copy the whole Castlevania Belmont's Curse folder to your Desktop. Do not skip this.
4. Delete only PLAYERPREFS.sav inside the original folder, then launch the demo so it writes a new one.

The two reports disagree on the folder name — LocalLow/Konami/Castlevania versus LocalLow\KONAMI\Castlevania Belmont's Curse. Start from the longer string, then confirm what your install created.

Nobody has documented what is inside the file. CaptainScience's theory: "some setting in there causes a problem when loading the game after the first time and that deleting the file forces it to generate a new one on the next launch." Unverified, but it implies a second-launch failure mode worth testing if your first session worked and later ones did not.

Official source: Castlevania: Belmont's Curse demo page — Konami — "Save data from the demo can be transferred to the full game."

Official source: Steam app data for the demo — the demo's own store description: "Save data from the demo can be transferred to the full game" and "Some content featured in the demo may differ from the full game."

What the pattern says, and what nobody has confirmed

Every fix touches either the display output path or the settings the demo reads at startup. Not one reply blames the CPU, the GPU, or an installed driver as such. That is a pattern worth acting on, not a diagnosis — no Konami developer has commented and no cause has been stated officially.

The absence of a fix is checkable: the newest item on the game's Steam news feed is dated October 1, 2026 — the demo launch announcement and the Autumn Sale notice — with no patch note, hotfix or known-issues entry in it as of October 5. One player wrote "Hopefully they'll fix it by release", which is a hope, not a commitment. When you file a report, naming which of the six you already tried is what turns another anecdote into something a developer can reproduce.

If the demo boots and then stutters or dips frames, that is a separate problem with its own ordered fix list in the demo FPS and settings guide.

Does any of this apply to Steam Deck, Linux, or the console demos?

Steam lists the demo for Windows only, so Deck and Linux players run it through a compatibility layer, and every confirmed fix came from native Windows hardware. Nothing has been tested on Proton or on Deck — the Steam Deck settings guide sets out what is known instead of promising a verdict.

No PS5, Xbox Series X|S or Switch report of a startup black screen appears in the thread. Nintendo Life's launch-day report has the demo live and playable on Switch. That is an absence of reports, not a confirmation those builds are unaffected.

FAQ

Does deleting PLAYERPREFS.sav delete my demo save? Nobody has verified what is inside the file. One player described it as a settings file that regenerates on the next launch; the other deleted the whole folder's contents. Copy the folder to your Desktop first, then delete only the one file — the save transfer rules explain what the carry-over depends on.

Will Konami fix this before October 15, 2026? No patch note, hotfix notice or known-issues list existed on the game's Steam news feed as of October 5, 2026, and no developer replied in the thread. Treat the release date as the deadline, not the fix date.

Why did it black screen only after my first session? CaptainScience's theory is that a setting written during the first run breaks loading afterwards. A player inference, not a confirmed mechanism.

Does capping my monitor to 120Hz cost me frames? Konami lists 60 fps as the PC target, so a 120Hz cap should not be the limiting factor. One player reported still playing at 120 fps afterwards; read it off your own screen.

The demo will not launch at all — same bug? Probably related, but the thread does not settle it. Check the taskbar first, since at least one player had a running process with no visible window, then work the six fixes in order.

Related Guides

• Belmont's Curse Demo FPS Drops and Settings Fixes — when the demo boots and then stutters.
• Stuck on the Belmont's Curse Demo? Fixes and FAQ — the troubleshooting hub.
• Castlevania Belmont's Curse Demo Guide: How to Play — what the demo contains.
• Belmont's Curse Demo Save Transfer: 5 Rules to Keep — what your progress needs.