I had the same issue as Prelucid Pictures when starting the game for the first time. It took so long I didn't expect it to work at all. Even just having visual feedback for the 'Run Program' button press could be enough to fix this.
The game itself felt a bit.. pointless to me. I never really felt under any threat, and only lost the game when I decided to stop playing. Some kind of sense of progression could make this game quite interesting.