For me personally Inform 7 did have an odd learning-curve: “English language code? Wow this is so easy I can do anything! Okay, this is kind of complex. WHY DOESN’T ANYTHING WORK? Oh wait, I can do anything so long as I compromise and use the very specific English syntax Inform understands. Wow, I can do anything!”
If you jibe with it it’s great. People who are good at regular coding usually can’t abide it at all. If you like normal coding better, you might want to look at Inform 6 (which is what Inform 7 compiles down to) or Dialog, which is a new language being created by Linus Akesson that feels like Inform with slightly more straightforward and compact code.
Many people really also like TADS3. I don’t use it, but it seems to be Windows only, and the publishing and distribution options aren’t as up to date.
My best suggestion for Inform 7 is take time to read the manual AND the recipe book in the IDE and play with the examples to get a fuller understanding of how things work. The concepts do build upon each other.
Inform 7 seems so initially user-friendly that I suspect many people read the first couple chapters and think they have the hang of it since it’s just “plain English” but as you’re discovering there’s a very specific syntax you have to use to make it understand what you’re talking about.