

Last time I did this it was Stardew Valley, and Terraria before that. Monster Hunter is good for this as well but only if you are gathering or farming something that isn’t too difficult. Old School RuneScape if you are into that kind of thing. Haven’t actually tried it with these ones but I bet OpenRCT2 and Monster Rancher would be great podcast games.
As far as virtual pinball goes, Visual Pinball X is a FOSS simulator and works great. Agreed that it can be an expensive hobby though. I’m pretty poor and even playing in arcades is too expensive for me to do regularly. I can’t imagine ever owning a table, or even one of those faux tables that looks like a real machine but is actually just a simulation.