Gaming

Snow Runner! Very chill if you like driving and nice sceneries. But it becomes Dark Souls real quick.

What about tycoon games ? Old school ones are usually stills very playable. Or for something more recent Planet Zoo can be as slow and peaceful as you like

I love ARPGs for this. Path of Exile and Last Epoch both have a highly repeatable endgame where you can just put on your media and blast maps/monoliths mindlessly for a few hours

Mordhau is definitely one of few casual games medieval fighting game where you can mindlessly kill other players and laugh your ass off. But at the same time its the type of game you can get really good at too. So it has a very in depth combat experience

Kartrider is a well developed Mariokart like game that is basically on all platforms (except Switch obviously).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQjON7OX63M

Part of my daily routine is to play Forza Horizon 5 while both listening to podcasts and working out on an elliptical machine every morning. I’m doing it on an Xbox, but it’s available on PC too. This kind of game is totally playable while listening to podcasts and still actually being able to follow what’s going on in the podcast.

Two casual-adjecent games I played a lot over the past week are Mini Motorways and Inscryption: Kacey's Mod.

The first one is like a simplified city building simulator that works more like an evolving puzzle, you just build roads to connect houses and buildings of the same color while trying to keep traffic moving along. It might sound overly simple but it gets hectic and intense incredibly fast.

The other is an expansion to the original Inscryption game, which was a roguelike deckbuilder with a horror-ish spin that, no spoilers, went places lmao. What the expansion does is essentially take out all the story and convert a specific part of the game into an actual endlessly repeatable roguelike. It's challenging, but very engaging, and the presentation is just 10/10.

TBH Minecraft Parkour in the Hypixel server's housing area are good for this. I usually play one until I starts getting hard/finish then switch to the next one while I'm watching YouTube.

Dead Cells was my go-to podcast game for quite a while! Story tidbits are few and far between, and it’s more about finding your stride in subsequent runs. There’s a lot of DLC that often goes on sale too.

Celeste can be quite casual and also challenging at the same time.

You can die as many times and the game doesn't punish you, you can save at any point and come back exactly where you lef off later.

Some of the paradox games maybe? I used to chill over Victoria II whilst doing things I really ought to have been giving my full attention.

You should try House Flipper