There is some special code to handle the loading of graphics at startup and I did have to update it for 1.8 since it loads some more large graphics. If you dont ”respond” in a timely fashion when loading some graphics the playdate kills your game and it shows up as a crash just like this.
I have tested this on my playdate (of course :) and it works fine, but they did make a change to the hardware not to long ago. When did you buy your playdate? My guess its simply a bit slower at loading graphics on the new hardware which might cause this issue. If that is the issue I think I can fix it even without the new hardware, but good to know that this is the case