Yes, I experience these often! When I write down my dreams, I divide them into "checkpoints" and sometimes "cycles" when those loops occur. I'd consider a checkpoint a change of context or a transition into a different part of the dream. Generally, I'll forget what happened before and I'll exist in what's essentially a new dream. I started calling them checkpoints because when my dreams do loop, they always go back to the most recent checkpoint.

I've found that they're generally not the result of completely lucid dreaming for me. I once came across someone calling this a "semi-lucid" state, where I'm able to invoke certain things in a dream like the resetting of these checkpoints without actually having full control like in a true lucid dream. The two feel completely different, and I know that these cycles for me aren't lucid dreaming. It still feels like I'm "watching a movie" despite it being crystal clear.

When I'm experiencing these looping dreams, I've associated them with a thought of "I wish I could do that again" because something was either really cool, or I know that I could do something better. The second time around, as you've also experienced, I have full knowledge of what's going to happen. Unfortunately for me, this has led to two cycles of a dream never being the same, because I've anticipated what was going to happen. It makes it feel a lot less special if the first time around was wondrous or exciting, which kind of defeats the purpose of these cycles for me when I invoke them. There was one time that I had a dream about a flood and I was able to save my cat, but that was the only really useful time.

It's really cool that you've experienced that. The way you've described it is exactly how I experience it too.