What are the best interactive fiction tools?

The best interactive fiction tools depend on the kind of story you want to make, but the widely used ones are Twine, Inform 7, ink, and Ren'Py, plus browser-based builders. Twine is the popular starting point for choice-based branching stories and exports to HTML with no coding required for basics. Inform 7 and TADS are made for parser games where players type commands. ink, by Inkle, is a scripting language many narrative games use under the hood. Ren'Py targets visual novels. Dungeon Mastron's Visual Builder is a no-code, node-graph option for branching stories. There is no single best, so pick based on whether you want parser input, click choices, or visuals, and how much you want to code.