love this concept
hmm... i can picture you guys doing an aquarium. like with those underwater viewing tunnels. if you want to go full-on Where's Waldo, a public musical performance in a natural auditorium (those big sloping bowls) would be a real visual pleasure to scoot around in - since it naturally arcs into a panorama, and has potential nature scenery.
i think it would also be immensely radical to mask up more people in a crowd, or show blowing fans + breezes. your fantasy of a safe crowd doesn't need to be removed from reality. making it chill might even save lives. for one thing: people went masked in public *all the time* pre-corona, and no one questioned it. let's go back to that?
it'd also be hilarious to knock on someone's window and have something break the fourth wall by looking back. hehehe
appreciated very much that this didn't disappear upon solving, instead of end-screen-bye after showing us a cool sandbox.
some nippy nits: as a point-and-click maven, you do not want to bring back pixel-hunting. bad, bad. destroys the chill. especially on the return. whatever active area you've got on returns, make it larger. moving objects also need to be more forgiving, for accessibility.
speaking of accessibility, *all* the important interactions need a visual cue. most of them do, but it's worth checking.
but the most crucial pick is that sometimes you find the object before reading the clue, and then the clue disappears... which not only did you miss as a player, but also contains important context for the return. i highly recommend somehow keeping the clue available. linearity isn't going to be guaranteed in your format.