Now largely forgotten, UK company Magnetic Scrolls produced some of the best examples in the genre - but it might take some work to get them running, as they had (non-interactive) graphics and a simple menu/windowing system which were state of the art at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_Scrolls
The Pawn and Corruption received especially high praise.
Hard mode: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Bureaucracy, both by Douglas Adams. Bureaucracy is outright sadistic. I solved it with a friend over a couple months after us both failing solo for much longer, and we celebrated our win with alcohol. I still remember the crushing hangover, Adamsesque in its dimensions and intensity. Worth it.
Magnetic Scrolls! Thanks for the blast from the past.
Here’s a great snippet from an interview with Anita Sinclair, one of the founders:
How do you design your adventures?
We have three development systems. We've got the VAX, which runs UNIX, and all the machine-dependent stuff gets developed on that. So when we've finished writing a game, we then upload it to the VAX, which does all the cross-compiling for us for the different machines. We then have Mac II's and Xenix machines, which run AU/X and XENT, and we have sub-development systems on that. All our tools are written in C.
The Pawn and Corruption received especially high praise.
Hard mode: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Bureaucracy, both by Douglas Adams. Bureaucracy is outright sadistic. I solved it with a friend over a couple months after us both failing solo for much longer, and we celebrated our win with alcohol. I still remember the crushing hangover, Adamsesque in its dimensions and intensity. Worth it.