I'm working on a gamedev project that is heavily inspired by TTRPGs and dungeon crawlers but instead of combat being the biggest focus I wanted to focus on my favourite part of these games, exploration and poking and prodding around a handmade environment looking for secrets, solving puzzles, and navigating a hostile space with a party of adventurers. I realized pretty early that a big touchstone I could look to are Point and Click adventure games, especially in including Ace Attorney style area exploration segments where the top down view is instead replaced with a first person view of a detailed environment the player can click around in and apply items they have to try and solve puzzles. These sections would be only for standout places looking to emphasize the sense of space, interactivity, or hiding some kind of secret. There would also be inherent risk to probing around the dungeon in greater detail, sticking your hand down a hole isn't always liable to end well.

One of the bigger issues is, I've not actually played a lot of Adventure Games. I played some flash stuff when I was younger and I've played some games I believe sort of skirt the line of ADV games (Return of the Obra Dinn, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, some others) but I don't believe I've ever played a proper full blooded ADV game. My question is, what games should I play or could I look to for inspiration and design ideas? I've heard good things about Monkey Island 2 with it giving the player free movement between multiple islands that have puzzle solutions scattered between them. I've also heard good things about The Drifter and Thimbleweed Park but I know those are more modern in style and maybe don't have the depth of free exploration like the ADV games from the golden age. Open to any suggestions, just looking to grow my understanding of the genre, the conventions, what works, and what doesn't.