Just bought this today and am excited to play it for the first time. :)

I seem to have a problem I'm not seeing on the forums: navigating the opening menus is fine, but once I start a new game I get dumped to the desktop every 20 seconds or so. It isn't a crash - I can click the game tab on the bottom of my desktop screen and get back into the game (only to get dumped again another 20 seconds later). Definitely unplayable as is.

I'd appreciate any help!

What are your system specs?

If you have Windows 7, I'd suggest turning Aero off to see if that fixes anything.

Also try closing all unnecessary background process no matter what OS you have, and see if that helps.

make sure you are running the game in the same resolution as your desktop, and/or enable windowed mode (see the sticky topic).

also try to shutdown any other application that might be interfering/stealing focus.