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It's kind of embarrassing, but I formed a local group (3 of us at the moment) of people developing adventure games here in Kansas City. It's mostly taking time as we learn to "build our own". Here is a link to what I think are our better text adventure game series (note: it's what we're learning off of and it will get better, I promise): https://artificers.dev/butteredtoast/
That being said, I do plan on making an text adventure game along similar lines.
I didn't play that until 18 when I bought the King's Quest collection. I think if that had been my first experience, I wouldn't have ventured into the adventure games world at all.
It did keep us busy on the fun DOS conversion
For me, it was the original King's Quest. Like you, my dad was looking at a way to keep my brother and I busy.
I introduced the 8-year-old to backgammon. She found it thrilling! We played 3 games before I had to do some yard work and other tasks as assigned.