Thanks, I'll give it another go, I thought I might just be missing something - but the water never started rising and iirc the menu said all you had to do was survive 9 minutes so I figured if it was counting time already I coulda won by not moving so maybe there was other stuff supposed to be happening.
Me sitting in the starting area doing nothing and going "huh game broke" reminds me of when I was a kid and didn't get far enough in Ecco the Dolphin to see the aliens and thought it was a game just about swimming left and right on the starting screen :D I am the idiot that games need to be made idiotproof for.