I did once write a text-based adventure game in C, however I only did that to work out some of hte "plot" and the layout/objects I was going to work with.
My actual aim was to write a simple text-adventure in Z80 assembly, which could run upon a CP/M system. I did achieve that, and later ported the game to the ZX Spectrum.
A few years after that I used one of the inform-compilers to recode a couple of the puzzles in the Z-machine, which would also have allowed me to run the game on a CP/M system, but to be honest by that point I'd lost interest and I never ported the whole of the game's text, and the two different endings etc.
That said my toy adventure was popular when submitted here, back in the day: