I purchased the VV3 game yesterday, and today while playing, I received this same error message. I had merely put a child on a mushroom when this occurred -- nothing unusual. The game shut down and froze my computer. I had to restart.

I would also like to bring up another issue and ask if it could be corrected with a "fix." In VV1 and 2, I always found it helpful to find a certain villager by pausing the game, going to the detail screen, then upon exiting the detail screen that certain villager would be highlighted (encircled). In Virtual Villagers 3, this will not happen in the "pause" mode, but only in the active mode.

Was this by design? Or a glitch? FYI I am using Windows XP.