I mostly agree, except this is a simple game. It should be simple to play.
If folk aren't seeing the text laid out in front of them, there are a couple tricks - demonstrate, make the instructions pictographic/difficult to dismiss.
There is a fine line between making your game accessible and providing too much instruction, but I can think of a couple visual cues that probably could have been given.
That being said I had no problem reading the intro, on the other hand I will regularly finish those long, long, long 45 minute articles that have "congratulations you made it to the bottom", and I know generally people who are great at reading much, much faster than me have little problem figuring out "techy" things, so I do think in general people just don't read enough.
That is, the more stuff is usable without reading manuals, the more people ignore the manuals - making it harder to build complex, powerful tools, and in fact creating a strong design pressure to "fisher price" your product. Overall, this trend ends up disempowering users.