Hey hey - thanks for playing! :) If you made it past 10 minutes, you should have gotten an audio cue to return to the main menu. Once you've survived that long, there's a gold star in the top right corner to toggle "manual mode" where the autopilot is turned off. (going to change that to 5 minutes)
As to the why: I'm a bit of a troll haha. I have been really treating making games as a bit of an experiment. Here it's like 'what does a game look like that doesn't need the player to play? How does it feel to play a game that later you realize you never had full control of?' And yes, I made the autopilot myself! Turns out it's easy to make something look 'smart' when it is in fact not all that smart hahah
TLDR: Art School has (endearingly) ruined me. haha