I unfortunately couldn't get past the 5th level because of the static effect, I don't know if it did the same thing for others. It did feel morally weird to bomb the bad guy's kids lol.
for me the same, though I skipped it, reloading the game and going to level 6 directly. I guess it is a bug (e.g. game over event triggered directly after start for some weird reason, or something else)
