There are two basic groups in the interactive fiction world, and as far as naming conventions go, they tend to vary from person to person.  So here’s the way you’ll see interactive fiction classified on this site:

interactive fiction is any work where the player somehow interacts with the game to change the course or outcome of the story.



choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) stories involve the author giving the player a list of choices and the player must choose one of the actions to continue with the story. Quite often this choice will change the course of the game. This title includes both online CYOA games as well as choose-your-own-adventure books that are mostly intended for kids.



text adventure games involve the player typing commands (usually two words) into a parser. The game prints text in response to that action. Using commands at your disposal, you can explore and manipulate the world to complete the game.



interactive art doesn’t really fall outside or inside of the bounds set by the term interactive fiction. Although not usually thought of as interactive fiction, I’d like to include  it here because it is a way of telling a story through the player’s interactions with a particular world. If you don’t know what interactive art is, I recommend you check out what I’ve written about it here or play some interactive art games for yourself.