The screenshot makes me realize that I haven't seen all of the game yet and reminds me that I was substantially surprised with my incomplete playthrough a few weeks ago.

I'll go ahead and write a comment based on what has stayed with me after that incomplete playthrough:
When I was in college, meta-narratives that created a feedback effect by applying to themselves seemed like the epitome of literature to me and I found myself always writing those. In the last five years or so I've been moving farther away from that kind of plot-centric perspective that depends on *meaning* being a well orchestrated paradox of a demonstration describing itself. I always knew that this 4th-wall priority limited the subject matter to the medium is presented within itself, but an awareness of the medium/material in which the presentation is embedded seemed like a form of honesty in art that I couldn't help but value (but as I find more and more of it, I find it less and less worthwhile).
This game reminded me of what attracted me to recursive meta-narratives in the first place (even though this isn't necessarily recursive). There is something so neat to me about the inhabitants of a narrative being aware of their own framework and reacting to that knowledge. It is significantly different to me that an author stepping in as a narrator and stating something about the process. While the latter creates a defacto rhetoric of literal author-ity, the first feels so much more severe and frightening for me. The realization that we create is horrifying to anyone with empathy. It implies a level of responsibility I'm uncomfortable with, but which I am incapable of remaining ignorant about.