Shark, and others,

There is a free engine for creating visual novels, choose your own adventure games, etc. available at this address:

http://www.bladeengine.com

It is Japanese, but the directions are in English. I looked at it and it does not seem too difficult to use.

thank you for the link
I shall download and try it as soon as I have time...

Shark, and others,

Here is another free program for creating choose your own adventure games, the Quest Markup Language.

It is more complex than the Blaze engine I told you about before, but can do a lot more. The address is http://questml.com/