When you're done checking out Quest, look up Squiffy (by the same group) and then Inform 7.
Squiffy is closest to the basic Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book format, updated for a digital environment and with minimal support for variables and such. But it works as webpage code (JavaScript?) and thus can be hosted just like a webpage.
Quest lets you create rooms and such, in a somewhat complicated GUI; I haven't played with it all that much, but it seems useful for small projects.
Inform 7 works from human-readable code (!!), wherein you describe the world and the objects within it, explain how they relate to each other and how they can be interacted with, define new verbs (and interrupts for if the player tries to do something forbidden: "Instead of picking up the car, say 'Do you think you're Superman?'"), all in code that's as close to English as I have ever seen.
So if you want to create a branching story with minimal interactivity, go for Squiffy; if you want to create a text-adventure world with tons of objects that could be manipulated by the player in any number of ways, go for Inform 7.
Viewing post in ADLENGINE - Roleplay / Text Adventure Engine comments
Thank you! I downloaded Inform 7 and had a look at the documentation and very novel approach at crafting text based digital storytelling.
There are a few quirks and annoyances. Every code update takes much longer than it should, I'll have to look into this (already excluded the programm folder from Windows Defender). The documentation inside the program seems not fully updated to the last iteration, some nomenclature and colours supposedly have been changed). The version I'm running is from 2015, which makes me a little cautious.
Still, it is an easy to use yet powerful tool for sure. I shall continue exploring its possibilites.