This sounds like a cool jam!  I'd like to point out a good environment for some kinds of text games: Mini Micro.

It was used for The Dragon Races, for example, and you can also see a text adventure in the video above (it's one of the demos that comes with it).  Mini Micro is free, and has a very supportive community.

Good point with the environment, I'd also like to point out Python, which is basically the same thing as Mini Micro. Just a little more console based.