People do not read a wall over a canvas
An early version of the overlay listed every control, every scoring rule, and a sportsmanship note. Testers tapped through it without reading, then died, then said the game was unexplained. The text was not missing. It was in the wrong place. A playable canvas asks for a verb. A paragraph asks for a chair.
The current overlay is Goal, one sentence, tap anywhere—or Space where that is the verb. Lane Switch says you sidestep. Ice Drift says you slide until you stop. Keeper Dive says you pick a third. If the sentence cannot hold the rule, the rule is too big for a five-minute game.
The playbook is the rest of the lesson
Controls, scoring, habits, mistakes, and a drill live in ordinary HTML under the game. You can read them without winning. You can read them after a loss without restarting. Screen readers can reach them. That is the opposite of locking instructions inside a pause menu that only appears if you already know how to pause.
A seven-second hint chip during the first moments of play is a courtesy, not a second tutorial. If you still cannot name the decision after the goal card, the chip, and one death, the playfield is the defect. Labels like YOU, CRATE, GOAL, and TARGET exist because the overlay should not have to apologize for silent art.
Waiting to start is also a pause
The game does not run under the overlay. Ads are not allowed to cover that card as if it were a playable second. When you tap, you have chosen to start. That boundary matters for lives and for fairness: a life lost because a banner ate the first jump is not a skill check.
If you want the long version of a title, scroll. If you want to play, tap. Splitting those jobs is how a game page stays both a toy and an article. Combining them into one auto-playing field with tiny type is how arcade sites become noise.