What an amazing find.
I am stunned to find so many people invested (emotionally and otherwise) in this genre.
I would like to introduce myself and tell you how I came upon this forum.
My name is Alex and I am 56yr old Computer Coding instructor at the high school level. (juniors and seniors). I teach coding foundations with a large emphasis on database design and development. It is a 2 yr program and classes are 5 days a week for ½ day at a time. That’s important to make sense of the project I am going to mention.
As part of my 2nd ½ for 1st yrs, I build 3-person teams in which they have 20 weeks to develop, design, map and narrate their own IF. They are introduced to the idea via Zork 1 on an emulator. I still recall playing Zork, new from the box, so may decades ago.
When I first started this concept 8 yrs ago, I was convinced that my students would be bored and revolt lol. I mean, lets face it. These kids are all gamers and have only known high end graphics, VR, and extremely visual types of game play. I thought that when I introduced them to zork they would look at me like I was insane and asking them to code using stone tools. Instead, they were consumed by the idea. After the first 3 days I had to wrench many of them away from playing the game to visualizing how they could design and write their own.
The systems they build are all web-based. They are given a basic interface where they can type in an input field and the “game” replies. Day one it simply says “I don’t understand that request. Please try again before we get eaten by a grue”. 
Everything else, from room mapping, to inventory, to weapons, NPCs, exit locking, riddles, attacking/defending, buying/selling, potions, etc has to all be coded from scratch. All the backend tables need to be designed and a full administration suite needs to be coded. It’s a huge, daunting project for high school juniors.
The average project ends up with some 40-60 tables within their database. Admins for each and every one. On average, we see 30-80 rooms or so depending on the concept. Recently we have started introducing supporting background imagery via MidJourney to get them familiar with some AI. I have recently started allowing them to supplement some descriptions with ChatGPT, but only after all room text has been written first. We also use Draw.IO for room mapping so they become familiar with a flowcharting interface in some small way. All maps and levels must be mapped completely before beginning the process of coding the exits.
To date, I have never been short of humbled and amazed by the ideas they have thought up and the systems they have built. We recently had an online TED style talk with John Romero , the original developer of DOOM. I was humbled to hear the feedback on how fantastic they thought the concept was for teaching foundational game development. He shared with us his original map concepts for Doom and the students were delighted to note how similar their own creations were. I think John was just as excited to share his original sketches with a group of self-starters like himself.
Sorry, I am just thrilled to see the collection of people here sharing their interest in this nearly lost art form. If there is anything specific I can help with regarding any other teachers/instructors here, please don’t hesitate to reach out. This will be my 8th year coming up with this project. I am actually considering expanding it to a 2nd yr full year project. ½ year sounds like a long time, but when you have to code everything every time from scratch it’s barely enough time to get everything working much less put the love needed into the story.
I look forward to consuming all the great conversations here.
Alex