Hmmm since you said card games, may i suggest a game like Forces at War (it is on the apple app store)
bguild 163 Posting Whiz
Sokoban is my favorite example of a game that is very easy to write but also quite fun. It is naturally graphical, but the graphics can be very simple.
If being nongraphical is really important then interactive fiction deserves a mention. It's a huge genre of games with no graphics, probably one of the few that is still active. Roguelike games are also often considered nongraphical, though that's not really true. Neither of these types of games is easy to write, but perhaps they are worth keeping in mind for later.