It’s not in my experience. But maybe we mean different things when talking about pacing in a game.
There are a bunch of options for the author to control the player’s sense of pacing.
A simple locked door is probably the most straightforward example. It guides the player to other sections of the map to explore. Planting a key for the door on a desk in plain sight will give a different experience than hiding a blueprint for an intricate safety lock.
Exposing the player to backstory and exposition offers choices too. Short bursts of information on computer screens or an encyclopaedia readable in its entirety. Do the computers have password protection? Does a glass casing protect the book? The player is guided along a path designed by the author, in the tempo intended by the author, to find the passwords or a hammer, passing through other areas of the map as the author planned.
There are a lot of ways the player can try to diverge from the author’s path or spend their time loitering, but there certainly are ways for the author to control the pacing to a certain extent.
Examples:
-I’d say that Guild of Thieves or your own Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina do not employ pacing, or very little.
-On the other hand, Slouching towards Bedlam and The King of Shreds and Patches are games with strongly paced narrative throughlines.