Who said Excel couldn't be fun?
Although Microsoft's software is mostly known for boring financial spreadsheets, it can also be so much more!
Some of the best Excel masters have managed to re-create some legendary games directly in Excel, proving one more time the saying that "Excel is the second-best software for anyting".
We've compiled here a list of 10 Excel games to revive some old memories of iconic games you probably played years ago. When possible, we included a link to allow you to read more on the project and to download the file to play these game.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Monopoly
The legendary board game has also been adapted to Excel by Andrew Werner back in 2011.
It allows you to play with other humans (up to 4 players) or against 3 computer opponents. Computers can have different personalities leading them to play different strategies.
Ready to buid a real estate empire? Although the game is no longer available for download on Andrew's site, you can still get an archive version.
Legend of Zelda
One of the most popular games of all times, The Legend of Zelda lets you live the adventures of Link and fight your way through riddles and battles to liberate princess Zelda.
That's an Excel-lent game for sure! Read more about it here.
Excel-Soccer
Football fans, here it comes!
You can actually play soccer game in Excel, thanks to Excel MVP Mourad Louha and the team at Excel-Soccer. This game was created in 2010, and was improved multiple times since with every football competition. Now there is actually both a League Manager, and a Cup Manager to play the European Championship 2016.
The games can be played in English, German and French. You can download them for free, directly from the Excel-Soccer website. There is a Basic version which is only formula-based, and a more advanced version that uses VBA.
Civilization
There is no limit to what you can do with Excel, and this is something which is proven to us once again by s0lly's [CELL]IVIZATION game.
This game was first created in 2019 and is based on the famous strategy game, allowing you to play with archers, cavalry and catapults directly in your favorite app.
It is free to download from the author's website.
Scrabble
Want to introduce Excel VBA to your grandma? We've got just the game for you!
You can play scrabble in Excel thanks to Tom_Jobim who published it on Reddit. The game is based on VBA. Not only can you please with humans but also with the computer.
Tetris
Created by Ismael Fanlo, this game reproduces the legendary Tetris game in Excel cells. Ready to kill it at stacking up blocks? Be careful, it's easy to get addicted and a quick break can easily become your entire afternoon trying to beat the highest scores.
You will find below the link to download this Tetris game as provided by the author.
2048
The famous sliding tile puzzle game can be played in Excel, with various levels of difficulty and a score board.
You can download it from Spreadsheet1.
Snake
Another amazing game some of us played days and nights years ago is the famous Snake game. How big can you make your snake grow?
This game was created on Excel by Khalid Zerouali.
Another version of the Snake game has been created by Excel-pratique.com and spice it up a bit by including multiple levels and objects of different values.
Chess Game Viewer
With this game created by Robert Gascon and published on a Microsoft forum, you can view some of the most famous chess games of all time. Want to improve your skills on the king of all games? Check it here.
Break out
Created by Carlos Rondão, this game reproduces the famous Break out which consists in destroying walls of bricks by making a ball bounce on a bar.
Hint: some of these files include macros that your Excel may block as a security precaution. We cannot take responsibility from any issue that would result from this action, we found that saving these files as a new .xlsm file was usually efficient to lift the restriction.
Disclaimer: we are not responsible if your coffee break takes much longer than expected today because of some of these games, nor from any copyright infringement or file security issue.