But there HAVE been other games based around time loops that manage to avoid that frustration, for instance by letting you manually restart the loop yourself in a quick way, or giving other starting points.

Famous examples include Majora’s Mask, The Sexy Brutale, and others. I understand Outer Wilds tries to hold the trappings of its story around the loop being more sci-fi than magic/fantasy in nature, but that’s still a goal of the writers to wrap the rules of the world around mechanics that are fun to play.

I can even think of many games that gave themselves minor plotholes and odd exceptions to the “world rules” just so that the player could get through it more conveniently.