It's a neat idea for a puzzle, but I ended up figuring out most of it by trial and error. Maybe being able to see the entire level would have helped, since I kept having to reset because I couldn't fit in a place that I didn't even know about when I picked up a bit. (Or maybe if there were more levels I would have learned to explore the whole level first, like I did on my second playthrough.)
The relation to the theme also kind of felt like a stretch to me. I guess it's that these bits are from a game that you're developing, but that's not really clear from anything within the game itself, without reading the description.