While it may not have explicitly taken inspiration from other games I'd imagine it's been subconsciously inspired by other games. After so many years of video games being made, any time now when a developer claims that their game is completely original is a red flag for me.

There's nothing wrong with a game being inspired by (or even a "copy" of) another one. Thinking every game needs to be original is like a car company thinking they need to reinvent the wheel.

I'm curious about what parts they think are original. Don't get me wrong, BOTW is fun (because Far Cry, AC etc and wacky physics are fun) and TOTK is fun (because building stuff with wacky physics is fun) but it's hardly groundbreaking.

"Originality" in games is weird anyway, most thinkable ideas have already been thought of, and many of them will be associated with particular titles/series or entire genres at a time.

Yeah, that attitude can sometimes work, and sometimes it leads to disaster. Famously, the original devs for FFXIV were proudly ignorant of other games in the MMORPG genre, and went off in their own direction. The resulting fiasco nearly killed off Square Enix until YoshiP, who had played Ultima Online, WoW, and other western MMORPGs, came in and whipped things into shape.

Did you know you can just play and enjoy games because you want to, and because you like them?

The Incredible Machine series was old, but the idea still existed.