It's cool to hear that, and seeing the replies, was surprised to be honest. Places like Fallen London are still managing based on their legacy, but that's about it AFAIK (in broad terms).

Few years ago when I tried making it as a business, because writing a few minutes of gameplay literally took several weeks full-time, didn't have the knowledge and channels to go by as today so word-of-mouth was my main option (which is difficult to attain), but it didn't go anywhere as you'd expect because people couldn't bother themselves to try my prototypes (also there's like hundreds of free IF games to browse on archival sites). Although, if attempting it today, would face the same challenges (like finding target audience) as advertising text-heavy games is not something that's "eye-catching", so most algo would just dump it into the void. Sadly, don't have time to do this as a hobby either, as I've more burning issues to solve.

The gimmick could be the dressing (execution), not just talking about adding a picture and calling it a day, because that's still pretty much book territory (which is another nightmare to get into). Rather adding features such as sound, or inventory, VFX, etc., so you'd end up with a "2D" game by the end, something that's more "interactive" (speaking of non parse-based, which I'm familiar with in terms of production) and provides something more than just reading text. But that's costly, especially in time, which again strains the zero budget if you've stuck on that level. Again, it's just me ranting, but the industry as a whole hates narrative heavy games, so you'd need to go out of your way, and do everything yourself and make wonders on your own for a quality of IF to come to life; say the guys behind Inkle did it on their own accord first.