Fallout-inspired game runs in Excel — a spreadsheet-powered wasteland escape from your daily corporate wasteland

News
By Christopher Harper
published

Would that make it more like Wasteland (1988)?

Gameplay screenshot of "Fallout in Excel".
Gameplay screenshot of "Fallout in Excel". (Image credit: Storyteller-Blog.com)

Ever wanted to explore a Fallout (1997)-flavored post-apocalyptic wasteland from with the safe confines of Microsoft Excel? 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 seen a functioning 16-bit CPU worked into Excel, complete with accompanying programming language. There have also been projects such as a functioning 3D game engine made in Microsoft Excel. As it turns out, people do lots of weird stuff with this application in addition to creating impossible-to-navigate spreadsheets.

In terms of gameplay, this Fallout-inspired Excel RPG actually looks a bit more like Wasteland (1988) than it does Fallout. 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 original Wasteland are present here in Fallout-Excel, as is the mostly text-based gameplay. On that note, Wasteland is currently just a few dollars on Steam — though of course, this Fallout in Excel project is completely free to play. It's also much shorter than the original Wasteland, 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-distinct Wasteland alternative. 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 more Wasteland than Fallout.

That said, the overall gameplay of this Excel RPG from Dynamic Pear looks pretty similar to the gameplay of the 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 into Pokemon battles or... Wordle. Now that's some real post-apocalyptic gaming.

Christopher Harper
Freelance News Writer
7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • evdjj3j
    "Since the Fallout series started as a result of a twenty-six year gap between Wasteland games"

    Huh?
    Reply
  • Rokinamerica
    evdjj3j said:
    "Since the Fallout series started as a result of a twenty-six year gap between Wasteland games"

    Huh?
    Wasteland was released in 1988. It was rereleased in 2014 on Steam. 26 years later.
    Reply
  • TheyCallMeContra
    evdjj3j said:
    "Since the Fallout series started as a result of a twenty-six year gap between Wasteland games"

    Huh?

    Wasteland is the primary inspo for Fallout.
    Reply
  • 35below0
    Rokinamerica said:
    Wasteland was released in 1988. It was rereleased in 2014 on Steam. 26 years later.
    Yes but 2014 is not the start of the Fallout series. That's a strange way of putting it.
    Reply
  • TheyCallMeContra
    35below0 said:
    Yes but 2014 is not the start of the Fallout series. That's a strange way of putting it.

    You are Not reading that sentence correctly, my friend. He's referring to the Wasteland rerelease, and I was referring to Wasteland 2's 2014 release in my article, not just the rerelease.
    Reply
  • 35below0
    TheyCallMeContra said:
    You are Not reading that sentence correctly, my friend. He's referring to the Wasteland rerelease, and I was referring to Wasteland 2's 2014 release in my article, not just the rerelease.
    I was replying to evdjjj3j's puzzled question about the 26 year gap resulting in Fallout. Which is incorrect but i know what you mean. Fallout was the spiritual successor to Wasteland, and the success of Fallout later led to Wasteland itself being resurrected and followed with a sequel, 26 years after the original Wasteland.

    So we're all cool and on the same page, it's just the wording that was a little odd.
    Reply
  • joshua220
    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.
    Where did you get that info? The only rights dispute that I'm aware of regarding the original Fallout was in regards to the GURPS system. Originally Interplay had secured the rights to do a CRPG using the Generic Universal Roleplaying System from Steve Jackson games, but they changed it to be their own custom system using the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. traits.

    I have never heard that there was a rights dispute over the name "Fallout". In fact, I just watched Tim Cain's video about how the setting of Fallout was developed and he mentioned that the name didn't even get picked until the game was mostly finished.
    Maybe you're referring to the later rights disputes that happened in the 2000's after Fallout 2 when there was a discussed MMO and canceled Fallout 3? That's not when the series "originally started out" though.

    In that same video Tim Cain said that Wasteland may have been an influence, but the game was more influenced by post apocalypse fiction from the 50's to 80's like A Boy and His Dog and Mad Max.
    Reply