The text-based game a dark room is kinda grindy, but I still enjoyed it. Whether you consider it IF is up to you (I personally don’t but I’m not gonna gatekeep), but it presents its interface using only text, buttons (of text), and ASCII graphics (necessary for maps and other things like [spoiler]). It is somewhat real-time, with actions having a cooldown after being used. In that way, it’s somewhat of an idle game, but it requires your attention more than other idle games do. It’s grindy in that it’s repetitive, but because the game loops are pretty short, it works out pretty well. Not sure if your game is in any way similar, but hopefully this gives you something to think about.
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I think a big example of a text-based game with grind is Kingdom of Loathing. It’s an online, (basically) single-player game. There’s some simple graphics and depending where you go in the game, there are all sorts of interactions (some more graphical, some more parser-like). But it’s basically Twine-like storylets.
It has grind, mostly to slow progression and allow for strategy (some approaches are more optimal than others). There’s also a robust item-collecting mechanic and trading/stores.
Kingdom of Loathing has been around for many years and you can play for free.
The more parser-like precursor are MUDs. The parser interface is pretty simple, but they had grind because the tabletop games they were emulating had grind.
I’d recommend reading Aaron Reed’s 50 Years of Text Games. He covers all these examples and more (and it’s fantastic)
Mostly games have grind to slow down progression either for player fairness, a power-growth feel or to maximize player-on-keyboard time for some other metric (eg buying power ups) You have to square with your design why you are grinding. Making sure “the player is strong enough” is avoiding the point. You could give them the power instantly. You could abstract out the grind.
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Peter Wiehe, HAL9000 and Brett Witty in particular I think have really accurate comments as to what makes a good grind.
The grind has to be enjoyable, and there are various ways to make it enjoyable. Some ways have been mentioned already, and I agree with them.
Text games don’t preclude graphics, and I think graphics (and animations) can add a lot. Darkest Dungeon has an incredibly satsifying grind loop, because the illustrations and animations are outstanding, and also because, as someone mentioned, the characters “feel alive.”
Old-school roguelikes like Nethack, or revivals of the same ilk, like Caves of Qud, achieve a lot of enjoyment and evocation with simple graphics that are merely ASCII characters, or nearly so.
I think you can achieve something similar with sufficiently evocative text, if you really don’t want to include any graphics at all.
Some of Porpentine’s early games, like for example With Those We Love Left Alive, have some looping elements that pass time, that are incredibly evocative because the writing is so good, even though it is extremely spare. It’s not grinding per se, but it definitely protracts playtime, while being enjoyable at the same time.
Just thought of another example of this–Horse Master. The whole game is one big loop grinding for stat increases. When the loop ends, the game ends.
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Edit: Gamebooks are an example of a game medium that is primarily text, but does typically include some illustrations, and which, in many cases, typically have some elements of grinding–an inventory, player attributes, a combat system…
I’ve never much played it but I hear that Sorcery! (originally a gamebook, now also a series of mobile games) is quite good and satisfying in the combat department…
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Stab in the dark, have you played “The Secret of Monkey Island”?
It’s a point and click adventure game with a part where you have to win at sword fighting, but since the game couldn’t have actual reflex challenges with swordplay, you had to correctly counter the other person’s insults.
Grinding in a way similar to this might be fun, where you as the author make like 100 “dad jokes” and the player has to pick the correct response out of a list. It would keep it text based, but if you have the stomach to make enough for the player to rarely see them repeated, it could be good.
I imagine you could make a system that makes more sense for whatever tone you want in your game, but that’s the first thing that comes to mind for me
I’m with Joey on this—I’m used to “grinding” being used specifically to describe bad examples, where you pad out your game’s running time by forcing players to do something tedious over and over (or, sometimes, pay money to skip it). If it’s not tedious and repetitive, I’d just call it gameplay instead.
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