If you don't mind doing choose your own adventure style stories, I'd recommend Twine. It's a low-to-no code way to write branching stories, and you can add variables and conditional branching if you want to add a little bit of code. It creates a playable website of your story when it compiles.
I do a lot of heavy coding but I still play around with Twine sometimes because it's fun. I also sometimes prototype the branching dialogue and/or story in my games using that as a tool as well, because I don't have to code anything.
There's also a subreddit for discussing twine games: https://www.reddit.com/r/twinegames/
A couple examples of how far you can take the engine: https://pseudavid.itch.io/the-master-of-the-land
And this one is super addicting. I played it 12 times in a row after trying it: https://johnayliff.itch.io/seedship