You can make progress in at least four different ways from here:
Save yourself! It keeps going like that. 
Seriously though, I think your commentary on Anchorhead is a good comparison: this is a big map and there are a few cool puzzles but most of it is having the item that unlocks the thing and finding items is mostly “you happened to look at at the right object in the right location to see it.” So especially at the beginning it is extremely sparse. And to me it kept feeling that way: a lot of it is like the text-adventure equivalent of pixel-hunting, or maybe Where’s Waldo (except you don’t know what he looks like so you’re just scouring the whole map for potentially interesting things). And… it’s also fairly fine-grained: often you’ll solve a puzzle or find a thing and it’ll unlock one piece of five for some other puzzle, or it’ll unlock a door that lets you go directly to some place that you could already get to but now you don’t have to walk around the long way.
So… I honestly don’t know why I played all the way through this game: I got stuck in the mindset of “I’m gonna get through it,” and I can see the kind of people who will love it but I don’t think you’re someone I would recommend it to.
I have been kinda thinking of doing a set of invisiclues for it because there were a couple parts I thoroughly enjoyed (I’d vote the north/east kiosk puzzle as XYZZY best puzzle) but they’re buried under a lot of stuff that I think most people aren’t going to find fun…
These are way more directly spoilery than I’d maybe want to give most people starting out, but since you’re feeling like that I think it’s reasonable to shortcut the item hunt for you:
The Shore is basically a big donut that connects most of the other zones (actually most zones connect to most others? but the exits tend to be more hidden/locked). So if you start from the Wharf and circle clockwise (south, east, etc.):
The west mall entrance (s, s, w from the wharf): go in, there’s a lighted shop to the north-east (hint hint).
you might as well turn it on: it doesn’t run out of juice and it seems completely arbitrary to me which places require light and which don’t? When it’s puzzle-relevant rather than when it makes real-world sense, I’d say. Anyway. Head back E, S, S back the way you came to the shore.
Continue down to the tunnels, wear the wading pants, then NE, E to the Lunarcade. N, E, U to the Selenelion. Poke around until you figure out how to open the shutters to the west.
wave detector and then dig multiple times in a row until you find something. But sometimes you have to wave detector at <thing> specifically before you dig. Note that the detector will randomly go off faintly and you can dig but you’ll find something worthless: these are just flavor AFAICT. But it’s confusing because it’s not gated to places where you can dig so sometimes it’ll randomly go off in a hotel room or something where you can’t dig. I’m pretty sure it always goes off more strongly when there’s something plot-relevant.wave detector at nettles and then dig repeatedly (I had to do it five times on this run) until you find the bolt cutters. Don’t forget to GET CUTTERS: it does NOT happen automatically and “finding” them doesn’t put them in the location, so if you forget to get them you’ll have to do the whole wave/dig/dig/dig thing all over again. Annoying and unnecessary, but….Once you’ve done all this, I’d recommend trying the kiosks. The tedious set starts outside the east entrance of the mall: these ones teach you a weird language. The first one is very random: IIRC pressed 12 buttons without seeing a success so I thought for a long time I had to find an item to decipher it. But you should get a beep if you do the right thing and a buzz if you do the wrong thing (and a buzz resets your progress toward solving to try and prevent you from accidentally solving without understanding). It helps to be systematic about this one.
The fun set starts on the north side of the island, toward the east side. Maybe the easiest way to describe its location is three east from the hot dog stand?. This is the best puzzle set in the game IMO. Well, barring the last one in the other language: I didn’t care about that one much.
Hope that helps, but I do think this game is for a pretty niche audience so it may well not be worth it for you…
In all honesty, I stumbled across it while poking around in search of something else, ha.
In terms of hints: first, a somewhat spoilery disclaimer that these hints won’t be very helpful right now. There’s something particular about the timing, which has to do with a recurring theme in this game. More specifically, it might be helpful to check back in about a week and a half from now… (Interestingly, this is related to a cool detail that was mentioned in the “Moondrop Isle is open for visitors” thread.)
Some hints that hopefully increase in specificity:
What you’re looking for is in the same area of the isle as the safe itself.
If you “think” in the garden (I believe meditating in the garden was mentioned in one of the audio tour recordings?), one of the things that comes to mind is something you might find in a garden. Although not all the plants are around anymore; it might help to look at the signs instead to figure out where things used to be.
If you remember what sorts of things you could do in the break room in the hotel basement, it might help to try something similar here.
Hope this helps! I’m also happy to be more specific if you’d like.
OK, I got far enough to get the letters PWdIpOMoeaalba but don’t know what to do with them. Entering them as-is doesn’t work. I’m really bad at anagrams, is that what I need to do with them?
Unrelated to this but also in the garden, it never before occurred to me to climb the sequoia and now I have an orange bow tie that I don’t understand the meaning of.
Do any of the letters stand out to you as having a meaning?
The sequoia - interesting: I found two things there (an audio message and a message with the decoder scope) but neither of them mean anything to me…
The audio message mentions a red planter. You have not have noticed it before but you’ve seen potted plants.
It’s not far away.
Explore the greenhouse.
Enter the greenhouse, go east, x red planter.
I didn’t see the other thing you mentioned until just now. We already have a badge but I don’t recognize the name Barnaby.
I keep trying to wear new weird stuff I’ve found and seeing if Adlai reacts to any of it but I’ve gotten nothing from him so far. I’m not sure if there’s anything really to do with him. Or his chaise/blanket for that matter.
I’ve started to play through this now, and I’m glad to see that others had the same experience as me. I thought I was doing something really dumb when I couldn’t find anything on the beach or a light source in the mall or got to the arcade and couldn’t do anything. I’ll try to avoid other hints but it sounds like all areas are inaccessible until you find a light source in one of them; does that sound right? Or are there self-contained puzzles I can do right off the bat?
You can make progress without a light. Have you got into the tunnels yet? There’s a big easy thing you can do down there.
You can also get to the Fortune Teller without a light, and that will open some possibilities and give you in-game hints.
I appreciate the help I’ve been given so far!
I’m having trouble with commands. I’ve been trying to watch a film reel and nothing seems to work:
>project andromeda
That's not a verb I recognize.
>put andromeda in projector
You don't want to lose track of the Andromeda Film Reel. Better hang on to it.
The projector is running, but there must not be a film loaded because all it's doing is projecting empty light at the screen.
>load andromeda
That's not a verb I recognize.
>put andromeda on projector
You don't want to lose track of the Andromeda Film Reel. Better hang on to it.
The projector is running, but there must not be a film loaded because all it's doing is projecting empty light at the screen.
>x projector
There's a projector up there for certain.
The projector is running, but there must not be a film loaded because all it's doing is projecting empty light at the screen.
>
Also, I’ve gotten into all sorts of places and done a lot of things but I feel like I’ve missed a lot of content and could use help.
-Where is the scope? Almost everyone in the thread mentions it and asks for hints on it but I can’t see where it was actually pointed out.
-I’ve gotten to the top floor of the hotel. Someone mentioned mosaics being something you learn about on the top floor but I didn’t find anything but the journal and photo and shadowbox.
-I played a bunch of arcade games but never found any letters besides the one in the prize cage, which I haven’t bought yet.
-I have the monorail on. It doesn’t seem like it accessed any new locations.
-Is there anything to do or any kind of puzzle in the garden/constrained location? Almost everything I do there just takes me to other areas. Is it just a transit area? I did find one wearable object.
-Almost everyone said you can name guinea pigs. I tried taking petting, and NAME-ing them but nothing happens. How do you do that?
-I did complete the kiosks and have the shovel and metal detector and got the elevator key and turned on power in the tunnels.
-In the atrium, if I touch tree and remember, I feel electricity going up the tree. Is there more than that?
-I still have no idea what commands to use with the projector. Is there like a separate projector room?
Edit: Also, just ran out of tokens. Do I need to reload a save?
The monorail should bring you to one previously inaccessible location (within the monorail zone). I don’t think you can do anything useful there until you find some more progression items.
The gardens have some secrets and puzzles but not much on the critical path. You can safely ignore them for now.
I think the syntax is “NAME <pig> <new name>”.
Yes, the projector is in a separate room from the screen.
I think there are always ways to get more tokens in the arcade, but I’m not sure.
Thanks! That is a big load off of my mind. I’ll keep exploring then and I’ll try the guinea pigs!
As for the tokens, for future players, finding letters gives you tokens.
Also, apparently you can cheat for tokens by throwing the bouncy ball at the glass, although I haven’t tried that.
Adding more explicit answers to questions I had above. These are all major absolute spoilers; the hints above are better if you don’t want it spoiled.
Where is the scope? it is the final reward of the lunarcade area after climbing the ladder of words. it’s in the prize area.
Where can I go after exploring the top floors of the hotel? you can cut the rope and let the moon fall. this lets you enter the 4th floor, which doesn’t seem to have anything, but gives you access to a vine on the ground floor, which has a CYOA maze.
What can I do in Nils Fagerburg’s area? You need the keycard. If you have it, you can open the safe and eat a pill that turns it into a parser game. Pretty cool!
Where are all the letters? One, D, is buried in the sand near the ladder area. You have to have the metal detector and the shovel. L needs to be cut out of the Hall of Light. C/U is a prize in the prize cabinet. A is accessed by entering the arcade through the monorail and beating the seagulls. N is hanging on a sign that’s not really mentioned in the area just east of there.
Still haven’t figured out the observatory passcode, how to beat the left/right/middle CYOA, or where to enter the the mosaics.code you get from
Edit: also still haven’t found the projector room.
Also, how do I get on top of the clubhouse? I never was able to open the broken glass door or the double doors
Editedit: Okay, from hints above I could tell that I had to go (for the clubhouse) to the southwest corner of the lazy river. Trying to go up spoils that there’s a secret ladder. A hint says I need to look at it from some other viewpoint to know it’s there. What viewpoint is that?
Editeditedit: okay, solved that: You have to climb to the top of the waterslide and specifically X DOME and then go into the waterway and it won’t tell you that a ladder is there and if you say X LADDER it will say you see no such thing, and you have to OPEN LADDER WITH PUTTER or whatever.
Editediteditedit: okay, I found the pot signs in the solarium. are they indicative of what I need to do with the vine?
Moredit: okay, for the vine you have to look on the ground below it and find some debris that’s weird. Search it and find a plaque. Then go back up the vine. You have new options now. I don’t know why.
Edit: okay, I finished the game and reviewed it.
This was a real trick I once saw a security guard in a bowling alley arcade do. Probably doesn’t work on all machines, but it seemed to shake the glass without setting off the anti-shock sensors.