Moments like these make Layers of Fear worth playing. Yet as beautifully disorienting as the game can be, it ultimately has little interesting to say about artists and less to say about art. Stomaching the jump scares and heavily recycled horror imagery will earn you a handful of mesmerizing vistas, but Layers of Fear fails to challenge or transform its central trope.
In the end, Oxenfree is absolutely a game about teenage bullshit (forgive me for being a little disingenuous earlier). But it manages to revitalize that narrative by focusing on feeling more than substance; it glances at each character's inner struggle rather than serving it up for a full meal.
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In the end, I was allowed to play Tormentum like I play all games that ask you to make moral choices. I skated through the game unlocking cages, freeing prisoners, and forgiving murderers with impunity. And I wasn't punished for it even once.