IF7's "natural language" syntax is not a pro IME. It often doesn't accept simple sentences, and sometimes rejects previously-valid sentences after a simple change is made. But because it's "natural language", there's very little help in the documentation for figuring out the syntax to do anything beyond the basics. AFAICT most of the good Inform games are made by people who have already made several terrible games. I'll definitely check out Curveship next time because I'm so done with IF7. (There's apparently a way to get IF7 to work with IF6 (code-style) syntax, but there wasn't much on that either, last time I checked.)