I missed the stone with the red hand, will look for it. Thanks. In such a detailed environment you likely need something to draw the player’s attention to smaller hotspots they can target? I assumed all were marked on the map and that’s likely incorrect, or I just missed it.
re: getting dark…some things are just objectively bad and poor game design, despite other games doing it. Myst etc are 30y old and were never really that well designed to begin with (just new and very pretty at the time). Call of the Sea was on my list to play soon. Not to debate, but that darkness just breeds player frustration here. You may be able to tweak it and polish it (maybe make items glow a little in the dark etc) but I’d advise against it. It’s 100% ok to make hard/challenging games, but you always have to factor in fairness and having the player blame themselves and not the game or developer. In the case of the time of day, they will all do the latter.
You can certainly make a modern adventure game with FP view and items and walking around solving puzzles. That will 100% work and will actually be an order of magnitude more successful than traditional point and click games if done properly. 3D is just more popular and mass market. It’s a valid path to pursue.