There is a bug that causes games made with certain versions of Game Maker to crash on Windows 8 when they do certain things with the sound system. This game is affected by the bug. I am not sure exactly what causes the crashes, but it seems to have something to do with playing multiple sounds at the same time.

To avoid these crashes, you can press the "8" key to cycle through different options for the sound system. The default is Mode 0. If you are using Windows 8, once you start up the game, you should switch to Mode 1, 2, 3 or 4 by pressing 8 one, two, three or four times. If the game crashes, try a different mode.

Mode 0: Play all music and sound effects as normal.
Mode 1: Play music and do not play more than one sound effect at the same time.
Mode 2: Play music but do not play sound effects.
Mode 3: Play sound effects (with no overlapping) but do not play music.
Mode 4: Mute all music and sound effects.

Modes 1 and 3 also shorten some of the sound effects to reduce the chance of a sound effect being awkwardly cut off.

Your preference will be stored in the save file, so you do not need to do this every time you start up the game. You only need to do it if it is your first time playing, or if you have deleted the save file.