Bronze

In my opinion, this game is perfect. Based on my limited experience with IF, I'd say this game definitely succeeds at introducing beginners to the "traditional" exploration and puzzle IF genre.

The map is sizable enough to keep the player curious but not so expansive as to overwhelm. The teleportation-style navigation feature keeps the beginner from getting bored with the "legwork" of bringing items to and fro to complete tasks and the "think about" hint feature doesn't let the player stay lost long enough to give up.

Having only played the game through once (so far) I don't have experience with the multiple possible endings, but after finishing the game I did skim the "making of" page on the author's site (which is full of spoilers), and I gained an increased respect for the amount of thought that went into the complete and polished game that I played.

I recommend this game especially to beginners, but if you're a veteran player of IF and you haven't played this game yet, give it a try.

Bronze is a great starting place for those getting into IF. It has a generous hint system and puzzles that are just the right difficulty (for me, anyway!). Though it has some parallels to Beauty and the Beast, it is it's own story and not romantic, if that's a concern. I would recommend printing a map or drawing a map to keep track of all of the locations. I didn't visit all of the possible rooms (the ones unlabeled on the PDF map), so I assume there is an alternate, perhaps more favorable, path. Next, I plan on having my middle school students work through this story as an intro to IF!