Suggestions for games with addicting skill mechanics that you can play while listening to an audiobook or podcast?

Balatro, it's a roguelike deck builder with poker mechanics

Geo and Galactic Mining Corp

Drill down into planets to get resources so that you can drill deeper and mine more. They’re very mindless and grindy, but the gameplay is also satisfying enough from moment-to-moment to enjoy them for a while without getting too bored. I beat both games while listening to audiobooks.

PowerWash Simulator

Exactly what it sounds like. A chill, easygoing game where you clean gunk off of stuff. Don’t know if it fits into your “addictive” requirement since there’s not really mechanics that keep you coming back, but for me the magnetism of getting stuff clean was enough to keep me hooked through the whole campaign.

Arcade Paradise

You might have to play a bit at the beginning to get used to the game first, but after you’re familiar with it, this becomes a great audiobook game. It starts out with you running a laundromat and doing loads of laundry for money. You then invest that money into arcade machines, and eventually you build up enough money from those that you can expand your business into an arcade and forget the laundry.

The game is a mix of chores (e.g. taking out the trash, clearing coins out of hoppers, plunging the toilet) and playing the arcade cabinets that you buy. There are dozens of different playable cabinets in the game, each with their own objectives to complete. Fair warning: the game is buggy and not quite balanced. Some of the objectives you get are ridiculous, and some of the games are tedious rather than fun. Nevertheless, the game overall has a lot more good than bad and it’s easy to spend mindless hours in it while you listen to something else (which is exactly how I played it).

Space Engineers

The way that I would describe this game is basically a really realistic Minecraft, minus the food aspect of it (although there might be a mod that adds it). Basically the only limiting factor for you is your own creativity and how well you solve (self-made) problems. If you are into C# coding, for the scripts uses this coding language to get make them. And if you not into it, or like me, have no idea how to code, there are scripts found in the workshop that you cam use. And don't worry about the DLCs, they are mostly cosmetic blocks, that really only change how a block looks, with some adding scenarios, which can be ignored.

Terraria

A 2d sandbox game, where the limit is you own creativity.

Doom is what comes to mind for me. Especially the 90's games, because of the whole category of slaughter maps. In those your goal is mostly managing gigantic hordes of monsters with your guns, there's just about zero emphasis on key collecting or puzzling through levels. Keeps you on your toes constantly so you have to settle into that sort of trance state to really get through some of them, at least that was my experience with it.

Doom 2016 in particular was a game I could also play like that, not so much Eternal. Eternal just makes a more complicated demand, to me at least, which meant I couldn't quite settle into it as easy. Too much opportunity to screw up an input because it's asking for more inputs. I played a lot of 2016's arcade mode in exactly the sort of way you're talking about.

Edit: Something hit my brain. Do you like shmups? I just realized I used to play a shitload of stuff like Ikaruga and Gradius when I wanted the kind of experience you were describing.

I listened to the Yale lectures on political science and philosopy, as well as a stanford course on the biology of the brain while playing Delta-V: Rings of Saturn. It's a top-down hyper-realistic physics sim about mining asteroids around saturn. It's got a dead simple, super fun loop that allowed one part of my brain to disengage and handle the flying and mining, while the other half learned stuff from the lecture videos. The only time I had to pause the video was when some bad guys decided to fight (which wasn't very often at all).

Euro or American Truck Simulator 2
Kind of an obvious one, but when I'm in the mood to listen to a podcast or audio book driving along long stretches of highways really sets the mood for me. Being able to level up and hire drivers to expand your trucker empire is also a nice reward!

I prefer to do jigsaw puzzles while listening.

But recently I started playing some osu on relax mode with the volume muted while listening to an audiobook, and it worked pretty well!

In my opinion Black Desert Online still has one of the best, if not the best, combat loop of any action game I've ever played. I haven't touched it in a while, but I am looking to get back into it when they release the new male class this summer. When I used to play I would just PvE grind in a mindless manner while listening to podcast or sport.

I mean, I do basically the same thing with the entire fighting game genre, but takes some getting into (they still teach these games so poorly in the main systems).

Some others i've played in similar situations-

One Step From Eden - Megaman battle network meets bullet hell.

Duelists of Eden - the previous game but PvP.

Rift Wizard 1/2- Distilled dungeon crawler so it can be played quite quickly in comparison to others in the genre.

Nexus 5x - Diet 4x. Quick and fun.

Spelunky1/2 - Great platformer/wonderful way to hate yourself.

Curious Expedition- Hex puzzle explore style game. Hard to explain. Can feel brutally difficult until you really learn the world.

There's probably a ton more i'm forgetting.

Is the Gnorp Apologue seem like something that might work? It's more on the clicker side which might not have enough skill but if I were to try what you describe I'd need something of that level.

Some Android games I fidget with:

Minesweeper - The Clean One

Spider Solitaire

Super Hexagon (also available on Steam)

I spent a lot of time on Coromon last month just grinding EXP while listening to video essays. There's story bits of course that call for your full attention, but I've spent dozens of hours just grinding in between.
Older Pokémon games are also good for that sort of grinding. Shiny hunting in general can also be a good one, especially if you're going through eggs. I used the first season of White Lotus as a chance to just hatch eggs. I also occasionally boot up Pokémon Platinum to work on shiny hunting a Shaymin.

If you have a Switch and have Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the Happy Home Paradise expansion can be another good one. It's just designing houses, so I sometimes load it up while playing videos. I do that with Happy Home Designer on 3DS, too.

The ultimate one I have though: Simon Tatham's Puzzles for mobile. Link is for Google play store but it looks like it's available for iOS too. They're simple puzzles, but they're actually surprisingly addictive. Just today I probably spent a good couple hours doing Untangle while listening to YouTube essays.
I've actually considered uninstalling it because I can spend hours on them, ignoring the need to sleep or do other stuff... But well, I recently had an 8-hour flight with a busted entertainment system, so that app was a good way to pass the time.

Dang you hit THPS... You doing high score runs? Those are great grindy fun. I hit 20mil on Warehouse in THPS 1+2 and couldn't do it again.

Action Henk is pretty great, it's 2d platforming timetrials from the team that made Descenders.

Absolute Drift is this beautifully zen driving game that has some narrative, but it's rare text and big moving objects. If Trackmania is on your list this should be.

Art of Rally as well. This and Absolute Drift are both made by Funselektor, and have great driving mechanics. Art of Rally requires a bit more focus, but it also has sandboxes to explore and get all completionist on, sorta likeTHPS freeskate, you can just vibe whilw paying attention to something else.

Risk of Rain 2: Keep your eye on things, but otherwise run, gun jump, and run.

Would love to piggyback of this and ask if anyone has any iOS/iPadOS specific recommendations

Here's a couple:

Foxhole.
World War styled MMO. MMO is a misleading descriptor though.
Pick a faction and continuously fight over a world until you win the campaign. This game goes much deeper than you'd initially see on the surface but there's a lot of "Mindless addictive" gameplay options.

• You could help the war effort by mining and refining materials into weapons.
• You could help the war effort by charging into enemy trenches with a bayonet.
• You could ferry items back and forth from the warehouses to the frontlines.
• Or go fight as a partisan behind enemy lines.

It's an MMO because it features two factions with lots of players at all times, but does not have to be played with a group. They recently made some changes that allowed solo play to make more of an impact too.

Hammerfight.

A strange game that sees you pilot some flying steampunky contraption with a big hunk of metal strapped to the bottom that you use to impart blunt force trauma to other flying steampunky contraptions.

I can't remember if it has a ton of story or dialogue, but I do remember it starts off a bit expositiony until it expands into slamming ships and upgrading your weaponry.

Utilizes your mouse as a way to create momentum for swings. Easy to grasp but requires some precise mousing to get good at it.

Last Epoch

Isometric ARPG's at all your thing? Like most ARPG's there's a story, but you can also choose to ignore that and go murder things and find loot. It's not a genre that requires a lot of explanation really. Go in and kill things. It's a simple gameplay loop that can prove very addicting when looking for that stretch goal of that perfect item. At this point in time it's probably the most accessible-while-not-dumbed-down ARPG on the market that will keep you busy until POE2.

Project Zomboid

Be aware, Early Access in case that's against your principles.

Fantastic survival game in a post apocalyptic zombie setting. Sounds trite and played out, but seriously just have a look. The premise is simple enough but it provides a lot of depth to keep you engaged starting with the way you spawn. You can spawn as a deaf person and there's no sound in game, you can spawn old and slow, young and spry, addicted to cigarettes or alcohol, and more.
Lore is found in the way of notes so no need to engage with that. Just play and go.

@knocklessmonster mentioned the art of rally already.

But it really is a good game and fits within your OlliOlli/skate/biking type of game where the game throws you obstacles to deal with and allows for a great deal of skill growth. Banging soundtrack, fun handling of the cars, and it oozes style.

Focus on staying the course in the dense forests and snowy tracks in Finland.
Get entranced by the cherry blossom trees on a drift in the mountains of Japan.
Go fast and time trial yourself on the asphalt in Germany.
Keep your car in good shape in the dusty and muddy environments of Africa.

Old, but the challenge of Crazy Taxi's twitchy mechanics is still an amazing thrill for me.

That said, I don't think that you'd remember the podcast.

TagPro

Browser-based capture the flag, multiplayer 4v4. You are a ball rolling around on the map. The inertia of your ball makes it a high skill ceiling game, where positioning matters a ton. Teamwork is important, but in public (i.e. non-competitive) games communication isn't really necessary (and isn't practical with only text chat).

I love this game. It came out in 2013, and I likely have thousands of hours in it.

Sadly there isn't much of a public-game-playing population outside of North America anymore.