The Enterprise Incidents

This one of the first pieces of IF that I have read/played. I played through it as a preview before sharing it with my middle school students. For me, this is a good follow up to '9:05' by Adam Cadre in presenting IF to students. There is a clear mission presented (delivering candygrams to students on a list), some puzzles along the way, and opportunities to be kind to others. The built-in map makes navigation a breeze. For me, the game took about 30 minutes to complete. A caveat if using this with students: in the story a student misreads 'tentacles' as 'testicles.'

Edit: To be clear, in my opinion this IF is not only for beginners, but the audience is teens. For a beginning teen, I give it 5 stars. If you're not part of this audience, it might not be for you; more like a 3 of 5 stars.