We’re glad you enjoyed the world and tone. A major aspect of the design was a growing sense of self and sentience. When the character dies we wanted it to feel like something was lost so we used that immersion break as a cold snap out of the game, a shocking loss of existence. We didn’t want to soften this by keeping you ‘in the game.’ The player also gets a new name to try and support this. I can definitely understand how this maybe isn’t as supported as it should be and why it’d be a major problem for you. We really appreciate you playing and taking the time to comment.
I can fully understand the logic behind "reviving" the character and making the player aware that the actual in game character has something unique to it, but please understand that factually, closing the game entirely breaks the immersion. It's not simply my opinion, because it has fundamental truth to the game development. I've seen games, which have done the same and when the player re-opens the game something changes, sometimes an entire level changes, or the environment is randomly generated, I can get behind that, but just closing the game and having a placeholder for another name is a bad design and it's not about frustration at all. I would argue that more than 50% of the players won't replay the game.
Again, the game can get more attention and popularity if there was some sort of a fail safe or maybe if you could execute the "reviving" aspect with more uniqueness. Closing the game is truly counter intuitive.
Good luck.