aaa i love seeing the concept sketches for point and click games. it's really cool to see how they end up in game!
also haha... i do wish there was a more current point and click engine that we could recommend but AGS does fit a very specific game dev niche with the only competitors being paid programs or else coding point and click mechanics yourself in other engines (renpy, rpgmaker mv, construct, etc). this post is actually very helpful so far in seeing where AGS fit your needs as well as where it came up short, and i actually would love to read an in-depth post-mortem of this game. i haven't used it myself so it's hard for me to articulate to jammers what is challenging about AGS exactly.
if you are really having issues with text display systems, people have built out point and click systems in renpy. there is a bit of code to it, but renpy is pretty customizable when you get a feel for it (and you can actually prototype an adventure game through text choices): https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20541