Help with choosing an engine

[manonamora (M.)]

@Tofutush

but how easy would rooms, items, time, characters, and state trackers (things easily done in Inform) be to implement in Twine?

passages and variables, essentially.

@Tofutush

that would have to include “examine (everything)”, “take (everything)”,

You could have the “item” be a link to examine it.
Plasmophorsis did a funky thing for interaction with elements (listbox + links)

@Tofutush

i guess the question now is, do i make Inform look like Twine, or make Twine act like Inform? how easy would either option be? or is there a third?

I’ve made Twine behave like Inform before, and while it was a fun challenge, I may not recommend it (because it’s a lot of hassle and you build the whole system from scratch.

From your previous answers, you seem to be more going the way of parsers rather than choice-based/hyperlinks. It is possible to change how Inform looks with some extensions (new shiny one). But there are other parser programs out there, like Adventuron, where you can customise how the Interface look (without it looking like a Twine).