There are games that does not uses compass with somewhat success. I would recommend The lost legends of Redwall: Escape the Gloomer.
If you have a manageable environment, where you don’t need to orientate yourself, you can build that just using “doors” or capturing the action going into any object in Inform 7.
Imagine a fork where there’s an upper trail and a lower trail. The location has both objects lower trail and upper trail. Both can be examined, and in both you can enter, where you being teleported to the proper next location. Maybe it could be a little tedious to program, but it is a proper way to do compasless IF, using only the verb GO TO.
Also… I remember this hot debate, some time ago:
But I still in my opinion, the compass is unbeatable as an interface: Recently I’m playing the last CROCODRACULA, and the Ryan’s port shamelessly states the exists as this
NORTH SOUTH EAST INSIDE.
At the end of every description.
It is a commodity. It is easy to learn, and easy to get the bearings. It is easy to use. It is only rock and roll, and I like it.