I think for a lot of people here, the hard part of writing an adventure is not writing the code but coming up with a compelling game with an interesting story and readable text. My advice is that if you want to actually end up with an adventure game that people can actually play, just pick an existing authoring system that looks like it will do sort-of what you want and start writing.
I speak from experience when I say if you start by writing the engine then you will quickly become side-tracked with technical issues and never get your game done.
I can recommend ink if you want a choice-based game. It is super easy to get started and the language lends itself to extension if you find it doesn't do what you need out of the box.
What are some existing authoring systems that exist for this sort of thing? I know Ren’Py exists for visual novels
Very cool coincidence to see this on the front page right after a sesh with the game.