I think this game is not for everyone.
If you were to spend your 12 hours building up a nice town, collecting seeds and generally playing the game rather than bucket grinding, when you die, you can just create a new character at your town and you have lost very little.
There are plenty of games out there without a death system like this. Although I don't doubt your experience in game developing, I think this game has a different target audience to those that you usual develop for as I do not think the developers are trying to make this a game for mass marketing to everyone.
Good luck with your developing.