Graphical applications in terminal

I am half mad and I suddenly had an idea. I don't care that it is very impractical and will cause me trouble, I want it for some reason. I want to have Linux, without a desktop environment, but be able to run certain apps in a GUI, for example viewing images or video's, or playing games on steam. If there is some kind of a desktop environment, that just looks like a terminal when not doing anything that requires a gui, I will be fine with that.