Ever wanted to explore aFallout (1997)-flavored post-apocalyptic wasteland from with the safe confines ofMicrosoftExcel? Dynamic Pear on YouTube, or “The Storyteller” on Storyteller-Blog.com, has been making playable Excel experiences for some time now — and the latest on the list is “a Fallout-inspired RPG game,” in which players explore the post-apocalyptic “Mercer”.
If this sounds unusually ambitious for a Microsoft Excel project, it actually… isn’t. We’ve seena functioning 16-bit CPUworked into Excel, complete with accompanying programming language. There have also been projects such as a functioning3D game enginemade in Microsoft Excel. As it turns out, people do lots of weird stuff with this application in addition to creatingimpossible-to-navigatespreadsheets.
In terms of gameplay, this Fallout-inspired Excel RPG actually looks a bit more likeWasteland (1988)than it doesFallout. The Fallout series originally started as a result of disputes over who had the rights to the name, with some of the original team eventually working to create a different post-apocalyptic series. Then inXile eventually got the rights to Wasteland from EA and Kickstarted a sequel, leading to the twenty-six year gap between Wasteland games.In this case, the top-down scrolling graphics and map navigation of the originalWastelandare present here in Fallout-Excel, as is the mostly text-based gameplay. On that note,Wastelandis currently just a few dollars onSteam— though of course, this Fallout in Excel project is completely free to play. It’s alsomuchshorter than the originalWasteland, never mind the sequels.
Fallout-Excel can be broken down into two main gameplay components: Questing and Battling. Eight quests can be found in the explorable top-down map that comprises Mercer, our legally-distinctWastelandalternative. The “meat” of the game is in the Battling system (like most RPGs), which uses some Dungeons and Dragons tabletop rules for its turn-based system. Again — way moreWastelandthanFallout.
That said, the overall gameplay of this Excel RPG from Dynamic Pear looks pretty similar to the gameplay ofthe rest of his Excel RPGs. Not to be overly critical, though— it’s cool that someone would go to the effort of making free RPGs that should run on any machine that runs Excel. It should be especially cool if you’re intoPokemonbattles or…Wordle. Now that’s some real post-apocalyptic gaming.
Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
