Personally I’m enjoying Palworld (playing for “free” on Game Pass) and I doubt it would have kept such a high level of concurrent players/interest even after a few days if it wasn’t fun at all and only a marketing gimmick. It’s a case where the whole of the core gameplay loop is more appealing than you’d think by just looking at the somewhat incongruous collection of parts. (How long the fun lasts is another question).
edit: I’d agree that the CEO may be overstating how much of a “genius” his employees are but I do think the pal designs are pretty good if not especially original. And the post seems to be more about his relief and gratitude at getting a difficult project over the line rather than objective claims.
Seconding Slay the Spire, though it might be slightly too easy to win on the first attempt (I did and I’m not a god gamer). An advantage of StS is that you can specify the RNG seed, so you could give everyone the same test.
FTL (another roguelite) on easy difficulty also might work, though it’s realtime with pause which might be tricky for less experienced gamers.
Both of these are games that benefit a lot from thoughtfulness and careful risk management.