Rameses

You're a teenager in a miserable Irish boarding school, surrounded by people you despise and wishing for the old days you spent with your best friend Daniel back. Some people say you can >wait or >z through this entire game, but I think that's missing the point. The gameplay is almost completely railroaded and the story is linear, but that doesn't mean it should've been a short story instead--Rameses subverts the interactivity of the IF medium to make the story meaningful.

Sometimes you just want to throttle the screen and go, "SAY something here, idiot," but you can't make the PC do anything, and the frustration the player feels at their inability to get the PC to do anything is the same as the frustration the PC feels at his own inability to take action.

It was a bit controversial when it first came out, but it won the XYZZY Award for Best PC (and my heart).