You Can Play a Fan-Made 'Fallout' Game in Excel
Has your office job gotten so boring that wandering a nuclear wasteland is starting to sound like a better alternative? Have we got the game for you! Just in time for Amazon’s Fallout series on Prime, YouTuber Dynamic Pear has managed to turn Microsoft Excel into a fully fledged Fallout-themed RPG, letting you slack off in a world where war never changes.
The game takes place in Mercer, a setting 145 years out from some vaguely Fallout-flavored nuclear devastation. Players will explore this setting across a full world map and eight quests, lovingly represented in pixel art via colored Excel cells.
According to Pear, the majority of the game is battle-focused, using a turn-based system based on Dungeons and Dragons. Battles appear via pop-up boxes, displaying sprite art for enemies alongside text boxes for stats and actions.
“Battling is the meat and bones of this game,” Pear says in a short video introducing his project. “It involves DnD style mechanics of initiative, AC, range, and movement.” While that might be a departure from recent entries like Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, it's a great throwback to the tabletop-inspired SPECIAL system of the first two games.
“Fallout but in Excel,” as an image on Pear’s website refers to it, isn’t actually Pear’s first time making a game using the unorthodox medium of Microsoft Excel. Prior projects include Excel-based versions of Pokémon and Baldur’s Gate III, as well as original projects including a horror game and a life sim game.
To play Pear’s Excel-based, Fallout-inspired RPG, simply download the workbook from his website and open it in Excel. Unfortunately, the game relies on Excel macros, so while Google Sheets and other Excel alternatives can open it, you’ll need Excel itself to play it. Luckily, we've got a guide on how to get Microsoft Office for free.