Text adventures with graphics had their commercial heyday between 1980 (Mystery House) and ca. 1993 (Gateway II). I suppose you do not mean point’n’click adventures.
“Interactive fiction” is not defined by the absence of graphics. The homebrew scene has abstained from graphics for a long time because it meant to have skills authors didn’t have, but with AI on the horizon one may consider if graphics could add to the atmosphere of a game in specific cases.
The obvious next step for integrating graphics with text adventures is better integration with modern game engines like Unity, UE5, Godot, etc., like Ink has. I’ve asked about this on and off here before, and am on the verge of throwing together something hacky for Godot once I have a game idea that actually justifies it.
Amen! 
There used to be a Flexible Windows extension, but it’s notoriously difficult to make work.
On the choice side, isn’t combining text and images just a visual novel? ANd does RenPy count as a more mainstream engine since it’s written in python instead of being a purpose built language?
Granted, the thing I want is a way to #include a parser in a C++ terminal application and compile to zmachine or glulxe or some such… Not overly interested in graphics, but that’s kind of comes with the territory as a blind guy.
I sort of remember that. Thanks.
Hopefully the writing isn’t so bad that you click Fling myself into the furnace and then go “well, that wasn’t what I expected…” But I guess in certain types of games with visible stats you want choice notations like
Press the flashing red button. +2 Curiosity
This <kbd> tag is so cool! +10 Joy
There are choice narratives with images that aren’t VNs. @Grim (Grim Baccaris) makes stunning artistic Twine games such as Heretic's Hope by Grim Baccaris.
Visual Novels are kind of their own stylistic thing. Though there are different variations, usually a VN is presented as scenes that are like a paper doll play - there is a CG or photographic background, and characters are (usually) drawn sprites usually 3/4 view or waist-up that slide around. Their conversation in the bottom third of the screen is like subtitles and may or may not be voice-acted. Often the sprites are collaged so they can change facial expressions and can gesture and move their arms and flip sides. You can have multiple sprites on screen having conversations in this manner.
Again, there are variations, but Visual Novels tend to be watch/read/click to continue a lot to advance extensive dialogue scenes with occasional choices. Many take the form of time-management dating sims and the agency is deciding which character you’re going to spend limited time with to build an affinity with them. VNs almost always include a “fast forward till there’s something new” button as many enjoy replaying to see every plot branch and variation. Many VNs do also include unique interfaces and can have mini games.
Ren’Py is the most popular engine and is free to use, but there is also a commercial Visual Novel Maker program by the same people who created RPGMaker which does a lot more fancy things.