The second death is often a copy of the first
Endless Runner and Flappy Bounce make restart cheap. That is a feature of the sitting, not a command to mash. If you cannot name the obstacle—late jump, extra flap, coin on a lip—the next round will be the same round.
One named miss is a rep. Five unnamed restarts are a mood. The playbook’s “after a mistake” line exists so the name is already written when you are too annoyed to invent one.
Puzzles can shuffle; action games should not rage-loop
Lights Out, Slide Nine, and Vial Sort let you undo or reshuffle because a wrong hypothesis is not a collision. Using that loop to think is practice. Using Endless Runner’s restart to skip thinking is not.
If you are still angry after two named misses, mute and leave. The mute-and-pause essay is the permission slip. This essay is the mechanic: restart is a tool, not the game.
A drill has an ending
Pick one cue—look past the landing, wait for cyan, keep a home corner—and stop when you have seen it twice. A personal best chase after that is optional. An hour of restarts is how a five-minute arcade becomes a drain.
Scores do not share a unit, so a “better session” is a named cue, not a HUD comparison across titles. Treat the number as weather. Treat the name as the log.