[eigenhombre]

Aaron Reed's 50 Years of Text Games[1][2] is a fantastic journey into the history and the possibilities of text-based games. I got the physical book and was surprised to find it as engaging as a novel. Each chapter takes one year between 1971 and 2020 and picks a game from that year to discuss in depth. While it might not help with the writing per se, you might good ideas there (several of the games discussed are in the "Adventure" lineage).

[1] https://if50.substack.com/archive?sort=new

[2] https://if50.textories.com/

[kqr]

This comment got me to purchase this book and bump it to the head of my reading queue. I'm about halfway through it and it's really, really good. I definitely think it can help with writing/design, by showing the breadth of possibilities and how the art has evolved.

[kaiokendev]

I can second this. I own the physical as well, has many pages going over the code used in the games being covered and why they were written that way.