Excel is a spreadsheet. At least that is the extent many users get with Excel. It is capable of so much more. Rather than organize customers and accounts, you can organize map locations, health, damage, locations and other parameters that games must manage as well. It can be taken even farther and build the games right into Excel itself. The following 2 images, one of a Missile Command style game and the other a Tower Defense game, were all created in Excel. Both games are available for download.

 

This is only a couple. There are even role playing games, board games, maze crawlers, it is quite amazing just what excel can do.

Monopoly

 

This simulation of the class board game Monopoly is just one example of how far Excel can go. It began as a way to come up with new strategies for computer players but eventually morphed into a four player board game of Monopoly. It then grew to incorporate computer opponents so a single player could play a four person game of Monopoly by themselves. Utilizing just Excel and VBA script, this is an amazing example as to just how far Excel can really go. The creator, Andrew Werner went so far as to allow you to adjust the AI difficulty.

You can get Monopoly here.
 

Arena

 

Arena is a Role Playing Game (RPG) done in Excel. It was popularized by it featuring on the popular community site, reddit.com.
 

The game features:

• Over 2000 enemies with different AI abilities.
• 39 Item modifiers resulting in over 1000 item combinations and attributes.
• One of 4 different endings controlled by the player’s choices.
• Varying tactics used by the game’s 8 boss.
• 31 different spells.
• 100 Achievements.

 

 

If you need help with this massive game, it even has its own wiki page to assist you.
You can get Arena here.

 

Tetris

 

This Tetris clone was made by George Lungu in 2010. It is a beautiful clone of this classic game, built all in Excel. It scores your row clears just as the original did and you can adjust the speed at which the bricks fall. There is a feature where if you pause the game you will lose all your points. It turns out Mr. Lungu’s son would pause the game to determine the best location for a brick and then un-pause, allowing him to amass a huge score. With all the graphics in this game, it may run slowly if you have an older computer.
 

You can get this Tetris clone here.
 

Breakout

Another remake of an Atari classic, Excel Breakout began as a test of the capabilities of dragging and dropping objects on Excel User Forms for a visual organization chart. Noticing that an object on the Excel Form could follow the movement of the mouse sparked the idea of making that the paddle. As the game progresses, the paddle with shorten and the ball with begin to move faster. This game was entirely written in VBA.

Though there is no playable version, there is a video of the game in action.

The possibilities of Excel never cease to amaze.