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What I could recommend for the text wall is a guided tutorial. I mentioned about teaching organically, and I view this in two ways: where the game makes it obvious you need to do a thing that you then figure out how to do (this applies more to action games), and where you're given a guided tutorial that lets you experience things in gameplay as you learn. The latter would be best for your game.

So for example, start the game with higher base money but nothing unlocked. Then, in a step-by-step order, have them do the following:

1. Buy their first cell.

2. Do research to unlock their first set of isotopes.

3. Force the player to use the slowest isotope.

4. Teach them how to use speed controls.

5. When the cell's heat level reaches about half way, teach them about heat. When it gets to near full, force the player to eject and get cooling. Also make them buy a second cell. Should they lack enough money due to poor decisions, you can supplement them with the money they need to do all this.

6. From here, let the player continue playing on their own for a while, as they now have everything they would've had from the start. When they gain the ability to use an isotope that requires shielding, force them to eject a cell, buy the first shield and put in an isotope that requires it. You can do another supplement if they don't have enough.

7. After they have more than 2 cells and have access to materials meant to absorb heat, teach them that so they can see it in action (Make them eject what they have in the second node, supplement their money in the event they don't have enough).

And from here, you leave them alone. You've covered everything. :D

(+1)
This is the most useful note we have had on HALFLIGHT, thank you. The opening text wall is the thing we suspected and couldn't name, and a staged sequence answers it properly. Buying the first cell, unlocking one isotope, then meeting heat as a problem the player has to solve rather than a paragraph they have to read, is a much better order than what is there now. We're going to cut the intro text to a single line and let the first cell teach the speed controls, with the heat lesson triggered by the gauge filling rather than stated up front. The money supplement is a good catch too, since a player who stalls in the first minute never sees any of the rest.
Yes please, we would take the VOD link when it is up. Watching where you actually stalled is worth more to us than the notes on their own, and the staged order you laid out is what we are rebuilding the opening around.