Thanks for actually playing it and saying the hard part. You're right on all three, and the middle one is the one that stings.
"Clicking wildly made me look like I do progress" is the exact flaw, and you're the third reader to hit it from a different angle. Wild clicks really do raise floors, so it reads as progress, while the lean builds toward a collapse you cannot see coming. The HUD shows the water's next move but not your own tower's. That is the hole: the thing that ends you is the only thing with no gauge.
"Nothing explained in game, only as text" is fair. The title card is the whole tutorial, and that costs me every player who taps before reading. In-world teaching is on the list.
That the concept does not land for you is taste, no argument from me.
One correction, to my numbers and not your read: I had been telling people it was about 75 seconds. It is 31. I fixed the store page tonight after another reader caught the same lie. The gap was mine, not yours.
Thanks for the honesty over a polite "nice game."