And is this a bug or a feature? I'm down with the whole 1-life permadeath thing, but I'm trying to play this at work god damnit.

The game doesn't like not being in focus. Don't alt tab out or minimize. You have to commit. I doubt it is an intended feature.

Usually games out of focus intentionally stop being updated. No need to have a gaming hogging up your system, if you're not playing it.

Yeah, it's best to just play it through to the end. Doing anything else is rolling the dice.

That is truly unfortunate. Thanks for confirming that I'm not just going insane though.

It's a metaphor for inattentive parents.

I find it okay if I have to go check something on the wiki.

yeah, I'm just trying to play some in between the gaps of writing articles for work and it's not really working. Currently undergoing an experiment as to the average time it takes to close.

and, of course, since I'm paying attention now, it's staying open.

Yeah...I had the same thing happening. I haven't played in a few days, but I think it stopped doing that when I turned the video setting down to low....I don't tend to minimize much while playing, though, so I'm not really 100% sure on that.

Well...I went to go test that out before I posted this, but now I can't get the game to open. It sits on that initial loading screen for a couple minutes and then just closes.

Odd. It's totally staying open for me now, up to 10 minutes both on the pause screen and idling in an unoccupied room in basements 1. I swear to God its like the thing can tell if I have my headphones in and won't close while I'm paying attention. I'll probably start playing intermittently and alt-tabbing some more as work winds down to a close and we'll see what happens. I'm going to try and record the time of all minimization from now on..

Update for anyone interested: It seems more likely to shut down if the music is off.

@LordXavierBritish: That's some video game analysis I can agree with you on.

It seems very random, but I guess that is commitment to the Rogue-Like quality of death being permanent. So no saving or returning to your game later, finish it now or don't finish at all.

I don't think it is intentional though because of randomness.

I've left the game minimize for more than a couple hours on several occasions, and haven't had any problems. Seems like this an inconsistent issue that varies from user to user.