Firstly, welcome to el forum! 
Are the friends you asked familiar with the game genre you’re presenting to them? It sounds to me like they’re not familiar with interactive fiction. One thing I’ve learnt of the years is that interactive fiction is not for everyone. I’d suggest asking some IF regulars to play though and see what they think, including myself.
If you really want to see things from a different perspective, check out the Really Bad IF Game Jam where we made deliberately terrible games .