Many roguelites could fall into this category, and are generally cheap to boot (i.e. vampire survivors).

Power wash simulator will be your best friend. No spoken dialogue, no important cutscenes, just you and a power wash gun. The only thing you'll miss out on listening to podcasts is the admittedly very soothing sound of PSSSSHHHHHHHHHH from the washer itself.

I have a Steam collection just for that purpose, called "zone-out games":

• Factorio
• Euro Truck Simulator
• Viscera Cleanup Detail
• Satisfactory
• Space Engineers
• Hardspace Shipbreaker
• Rift Breaker
• Monster Train
• Jupiter Hell
• Vampire Survivors
• Dorf Romantik
• DOOM (any)
• Nethack

Some advice I want to give is that "games that require a lot of skill" is only a temporary blocker. If you enjoy a hard game enough to play through it repeatedly, it can become a podcast game. Many people play Bloodborne or Binding of Isaac to audiobooks, and roguelikes are generally like this.

That in mind, I have a list of games that are valid podcast games but I haven't built enough familiarity with them yet:

• FTL
• Binding of Isaac
• Terraria
• Risk of Rain
• Against the Storm

Vampire Survivors for sure! It's a very chill arcade game and it's like 2-3€ when on sale.

FTL is fun and hard.

Also mindustry

Stardew Valley is a really chill and fun game. You can talk to the towns people but don't have to and the dialogue is all very short if you do.

My father really likes Mini Motorways. You could try something like that

He's a big fan of sim cities and zoo tychoon and stuff too

Dorfromantik is a very chill puzzle game that runs great on Steam Deck if that’s your thing, a favourite of mine while the TV is going in the background.

If you’re into factory games I 1000% recommend Shapez, which is a shape-building game that doesn’t have the notion of grinding or currency or running out of resources. It’s immensely satisfying when you get the perfect mechanism together and you’re churning out shapes. Definitely one for mouse and keyboard though.