My teen is getting into video game design, and is doing the thing where they’re wonderfully overambitious for their first project. They’re combining meta stuff from all their favourite games, and learning a lot, so I want to offer more meta-heavy games to add to the project creep! Do you have any suggestions? So far, it’s Baba is you, Maxwell’s puzzling demon, Pâqurette Down the Bunburrows, Gentoo Rescue, E9uations, Patrick’s Parabox, Theta and Paralldoxs on Worldlines, and A Little Perspective.

At a glance, their list of influences is conspicuously absent of meta-bullshit-heavy first person walking sims like Manifold Garden , Superliminal , Viewfinder , and of course The Stanley Parable . I'd also be inclined to branch out into meta bullshit puzzle platformers like The Pedestrian or Recursed if you really want to maximise scope creep – there's nothing like getting real-time physics in…