For our purposes, I think it's fine if the player themselves survive. I think the questions you pose are super valid ones, but the simplest form where only the player surviving to the end matters is good enough for the purposes we want in our static. The way I would use it is, please play the simulator until you have 10 completions (or whatever is appropriate), then show me a screenshot as a receipt of your accomplishment. That allows me to have some level of confidence that people grasp what's going on in the mechanic.
Hopefully that should be the bare simplest form of this idea, too.