That’s a good question. I feel like sometimes text and images are pulling at different parts of the brain… I either want to dive into the text and let my imagination build the scene in my head, or I want to immerse myself in a movie… Of course, graphic novels merge the two… In the days of transition from text adventures like Zork to Immersive graphics games like Myst, I really enjoyed a game called The Journeyman Project 2, Buried in Time. It wasn’t so much text, as spoken audio (screenplay like) with an immersive graphical Myst like environment.
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That’s one of the paradoxes (paradoxii?) of parser games. Many experienced parser players prefer to download the bare Gblorb (or whatever) source file and play in an interpreter with their own settings so won’t see any customized decorative elements or fonts or colors. The way to do this is usually CSS/HTML settings in the browser-playable version the same way you’d decorate a web page. The other way is Vorple, however that also intends you set up a playable webpage instead of the player downloading a file.
Online testbed for Vorple via Borogove: https://borogove.app
The “images take up too much space” issue was tackled by game companies such as Magnetic Scrolls and Legend who provided fixed or moveable windows for images and other interface elements, and to some extent Inform extensions - “Flexible Windows” allowed authors to divide the play space up and include division for something like location images or an inventory list similar to Legend’s layout, however this extension is notoriously difficult to implement and deprecated in modern updates of I7.
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I’ve been doing pictures in my games for 25 years and I’ve noticed now that screen resolutions have increased so much that the images from my earlier games are these tiny little rectangles that barely take up any room. Everything looks weird now. There would be so much room on a modern display for an IF company like Legend or MS to work with now! 
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Apart from being attracted to certain genres, I’m more likely to play a game with even a bit of illustration or graphic design. This year during IF Comp, I probably wouldn’t have noticed “Birding In Pope Lick Park” if it didn’t feature photography.
My favorite IF games don’t necessarily have graphics, though.
I think it’s a good idea in your example (the Radcliffe Camera) because it’s hard to describe real-world objects in a way that the reader will get an accurate mental image.
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On the subject of embellishment, had I a working eye, I think giving the interpreter window an ink on parchment look would be quite fitting for a medieval fantasy adventure. and having a border that changes depending on environment(e.g. a wooden frame with creeping vines for forest, stone masonry for city/castle, rough rock for a cave) might be nice.
As for image resolution… I don’t know what was typical for early home computers, but going from the 256240 resolution of the NES to the 38402160 of modern 4k monitors is a 135 fold increase in pixel count, and even the NES is a 10 fold increase over the 9664 resolution of the TI-83(which is still better than the highest resolution tactile display I know of, which is 6440). We’re practically comparing postage stamps to A0 posters at those extremes. Scale some of those early graphics to fit properly on a modern screen and someone with working eyeballs might be able to see individual image pixels from across the room.
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I like illustrations in parser-based games.
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My knee-jerk response is: I don’t want images in my parser-based IF. (Of course, everyone else is free to like what they like.)
My favorite game so far in this year’s IF Comp doesn’t even have a cover image.
Then again, my second-favorite game has a diagram on screen at all times/ And it was essential to me to enjoy the game.
After playing and loving some text-only parser games, I’ve been exposed to artwork depicting characters or scenes and been very disappointed because they were at odds with the images in my brain. For some of the Infocom games, I saw the feelies after the fact and almost didn’t even recognize them as associated with the games I played.
Sometimes it’s specific details (that character was a redhead?!). Other times it’s that the visual style doesn’t resonate with the vibe I got from the text (garish comic book colors instead of grainy black-and-white noir?!).
Descriptive text, no matter how detailed and specific, creates a wonderfully fuzzy region of interpretations. Images put a fine-point pin in the map. And sometimes text can be intentionally vague. Don’t show me a picture of Zork’s gentleman thief or Jigsaw’s attractive stranger. I guarantee I’d be disappointed.
I enjoy movies and television and even a couple video games. But when I sit down to read a traditional novel or participate in a parser-based interactive fiction, I’m looking for a textual experience. Painting images in my head is part of the interactivity.
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Understandable and subjective, but I suppose this is also true for book illustrations. For example: some of the later editions of The Gunslinger/The Dark Tower included mid-book glossy pages with original paintings and I could see people who’d read that book before it had a special addition going “nah, that’s not what he looks like.” Although it’s possible these included paintings might have been the original cover art for earlier editions?
But I understand the “I don’t want a picture to ruin what’s in my head” mentality.
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I just make images optional and print alt-tags instead (for screen reader users). I haven’t considered printing nothing, and probably wouldn’t.
I think: if images are an intentional part of a work, they aren’t a separate thing to be considered outside of the piece. They might not be successful (a critic can decide), but what else is new? I don’t think illustrations of the thief or Black really correlate, since those aren’t part of their respective texts.
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