Untitled Goose Game was the direct inspiration for this! Along with an ancient loony toons cartoon that I've forgotten the name of (not any of the well known ones, there was a one-off cartoon about a mole).
Figuring out the invincibility timing was rather difficult for me, since if it's much longer it could easily be abused. Currently its purpose is to make sure the player wouldn't get combo'd by several farmers at once. Were you trying to run from the farmer? I've noticed some people will just instinctively try to run (since that's how most games work, I probably should have factored that into the tutorial), however immediately burrowing is generally safer. If you were burrowing to get away and still having issues then this might be a larger problem. Thanks for pointing it out.
I've encountered the shader compilation issue before. In previous games I've either been able to create a cache myself, or just fire every particle at the start of the game somewhere off screen. For some reason, neither worked here.