You Were Doomed From the Start

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

I hate to say it, but once I saw the author's name, I knew the title couldn't be more appropriate. Doomed is like a very stripped down, simplified version of The Last Just Cause, and is put forth by the author as "more of a 'Example work' to teach programmers how to program a Text-based game more that [sic] a full game." This is too easy a target, so I'll just say this: people interested in writing a text game should evaluate a few different games, perhaps sampling among the systems used in this competition, and decide which ones they'd most like their game to resemble.