Excel Games

Non-productive use of essential software!

Are you limited in what games your company's IT/IS department will leave installed on your work machine? Well, it seems very unlikely they will take Excel away from you. And Excel, among other things, is an interesting development platform for some fairly amusing programs.

So, enter Excel Games -- the site for games and play inside a program they'll never uninstall. Try them out, and you will find that the Excel version is often as good as any stand alone application!

If you have an Excel based game you would like to see made available through this site, you can contact me at "excelgames.net {at} gmail {dot} com". Strong preference given to games you've programmed personally.

March 2012 Update:Edison submitted a simple Tic-Tac-Toe game, and skIP sent in Word Search. Both fine games, try them out and see if you aren't inspired to make your own game too! Enjoy

February 2012 Update: Ben sent in Yahtzee, the classic dice rolling game. Will sent in Baseball 2010, which might seem like it is not that timely but is just now going up because I sort of misplaced the file until a few weeks ago. Christian sent in Knight & Lansquenet, about which I can only say "wow!". And I still have a half dozen in the queue, so look for another update soon!

December 2011 Update: I wrote another little word game, called Jotto - surprisingly addictive, give it a try!

November 2011 Update: It's alternates season - a new version of MasterMind from Otto, and of Numbers Game from Colin; both Excel 2007 or later versions to take advantage of the great leap forward. Not so much backwards compatable, but there you go.

October 2011 Update: I created a spreadsheet for playing "Deal or No Deal?", which is another pretty plain appearing kind of spreadsheet, but lots of pop-up boxes. skIP send along Tower of Hanoi, the classic tower moving puzzle game. And Daniel has given us a third version of Sokoban. And Ken sent along a board game called Trouble. Seems like a lot of new stuff, but I have even more in the pipeline - check back again soon!

August 2011 Update: I am way behind, and have about a dozen games I need to get uploaded. But all I managed this month was another (improved) version of Rubik's Cube, give it a try!

February 2011 Update: skIP sent along Zodiac, a simple little astrology spreadsheet. Check it out -- it is your destiny!

November 2010 Update: skIP, from Park Bench Royalty, has sent in a number of games over the last year or so, and I've finally added them to the site: check out his version of Video Poker, or try Dog Racing. Lest you think he's just a gambling man, he also sent in a tricky version of HangMan, a word guessing game. Thanks, skIP!

September 2010 Update: Added a puzzle game called Rotation and a space invaders type game, both from Ed; also Klondike Solitaire from Darren. All good stuff, and all sent in a long long time ago. I'm through cleaning out the old files, so new games will be actually new-ish submissions going forward for a while. Stay tuned.

June 2010 Update: Justin sent along Pipe Dream, which is a cool game and the implementation is very Excelly. That's not a word, I guess, but you should definitely check it out anyway.

May 2010 Update: Added one more bit of mindblowingness from Meir Bogot, a Random Dot Stereogram Generator. One of many things I bet you didn't think could be done in Excel.

I'm gradually working through 2 years of backed up emails; more updates soon.

April 2010 Update: No new games, but I finally (finally!) fixed the email issue. If you have attempted to contact me in the past 10 months, it didn't get through, and you probably thought this site was abandoned. Nope, I just only attempted to fix the problem about once a month, and it took me 10 tries. Sorry, everyone, please re-send anything and everything; now that I'm back up and running I'll get some new programs loaded.

July 2009 Update: Turns out I don't update every month! But I tried to make up a bit for lost time. Kirk Bolen sent me this Frogger clone over a year ago, so you see how quickly I get through my inbox. The program remains awesome, however. I was much faster processing Mitchell Cooper's Glug Glug, a virtual aquarium program. It's an aquatic themed update all around!

March 2009 Update:Boulder Dash, which if you're old enough (or young but hip enough) will bring back many fond memories -- wacko good graphics in an 80's kind of way. Dig it? (Hah -- "dig" it -- get it? Huh? Huh? Meh.)

February 2009 Update:AC/DC Music Video in Excel. Yes, really.

December 2008 Update:Isn't it terrible how, from time to time, one's job and family take time away from one's hobbies? I've been letting this site grow stale, and at the same time stressing about the growing backlog of files I've been sent. No more! Today, I've added a file. Isidoro sent along a pretty slick version of Concentration. Give it a try, although I warn you it is a memory hog. Also, I finally got around to adding Shehzad's lovely MouseHunt game, which is strangely addictive. Give it a try. Only about 14 submissions left to evaluate, so more to come!

September 2008 Update:New contributor Andoni Elcano sent along Snake and another version of Sokoban, which he calls "Boxxle". He sent a couple of others as well, but I haven't had time to review them all yet. So, more to come! Stay tuned.

July 2008 Update: New contributer Alex sent along WingDings Match, a/k/a Concentration, a/k/a Memory. Simple but cool.

I also (finally) got around to loading up two more from Meir Bogot: the pretty but dysfunctional Rush Hour and the mostly functional Pong.

That runs through about half the backlog of stuff I've been meaning to add to this site. Got a game you've written? Send it along! I'll get to posting it in, oh, 3 months (on average)...

May 2008 Update: Life is slowing down enough that I might get some new stuff up soon, but for now I have just updated the Battleship and Minesweeper pages with new version by different authors. Enjoy!

April 2008 Update:I threw up a page for Meir's Checkers program. There's still a tremendous backlog of stuff for me to put up, and not enough time available to do it.

February 2008 Update:Joe Miler sent along a Chess program, which shamed me into remembering that Meir had already sent me one a while back, and why haven't I put up a Chess page yet? So I did. I still have a big backlog of programs to evaluate and add to this site, but I've been a little busy lately. Keep checking back, I'll get to more of the good stuff soon!

November 2007 Update (2): I've added Meir Bogot's version to Tetris, because two versions was not enough. Also added two programs which are not, strictly, games: Jocelyn Paine's Science Fiction Plot Generator and Isidoro's 3D Viewer. So you'll never get "game over", they're both cool programs.

In the traditional game category, we do have a couple of new ones: Slots from Carlos Rondão, and a wicked little puzzle from Will called Forty's Rings.

My "to add" list is still quite long, but for some reason it's busy around here, so more as I get a chance...

November 2007 Update (1): Put up another from Meir Bogot, Sokoban, which is most excellent. Also one of the games sent in by Shehzad-ul-Haq, "Complex Guess". Bet you thought I'd forgotten you, Shehzad! No, I'm just slow. But I have good intentions of getting more games posted later this month, so check back soon!

October 2007 Update: Meir Bogot came along and offered me a number of files -- the first of which I've actually loaded being Reversi! More to come soon...

September 2007 Update: What'd I do, fall off a cliff? No, just been slammed with actual, you know, work. But I'm getting around to adding some new stuff!

Justin sent along "Stones of Power", which is the start of something big, but never grew. Cool for what it is, though, if you're into that sort of thing.

Carlos Rondão has also opened up bejeweled for your edification! If you're into VBA, you'll want to download the new version of this so you can learn from the master!

May 2007 Update: I had intended to get some more programs others have sent in up. But instead I wrote another one myself -- TexTwisT is a word search game. You're given 6 letters, scrambled, and try to find as many 3-6 letter words as possible from them. Strangely addictive!

Later in April 2007 Update: Added a couple of programs submitted by Will -- Connect 4 and Mastermind. Both have open source code, if you are into that kind of thing. I've a couple more from Will to add, just being slow getting to them. More for you to anticipate that way, I expect.

Early April 2007 Update: first new bit is Excel Mazes, an "amazing" little program from Walter Pullen.

One lovely side effect of this site being a bit more discovered is I have been hearing from lots of people with cool programs to share. Will and Shehzad, your contributions are coming soon, I promise! Everyone else, check back soon to see what's in store...

March 2007 Update: added Berulex, another Rondão arcade game.

I can no longer claim that this site is un-explored, as on 3/22/07 we were "stumbled upon" by one of the social bookmarking sites. All positive feedback, I am happy to say. Daily visits had been creeping up to the 400-600 pageviews/day range anyway, but that day we hit 2,521. Wow!

The feedback I've been getting by email and on the forms on each game seem to indicate more of a VBA-nerd crowd visiting this site than I was really expecting. So I'm thinking of how to make this site more attractive to those of us who are equally interested in "how did they DO that?" and "can I play that?". Stay tuned.

Mid January Update: not much, just a new Sudoku Solver. Can't ever have enough of those...

What's new as of mid-December: another knock-out from Carlos Rondão (pardon the pun): BubbleCell (I'm almost repeating myself!)

There's also an update to my own minesweeper program, though it is still under development. Also received a version of Video Poker from Kirk Bolen -- thank you Kirk!

If you're into programming Excel to do this kind of crazy stuff, you might want to check out Bartlomiej Dzik's site, which has some more great examples of Excel games and several essays on Excel as a game development platform.

What's new as of mid-September: another knock-out from Carlos Rondão (pardon the pun): Breakout (also known as Arkanoid to some?)

What's new as of late-June: James Washer has contributed a very slick little module for tracking your golf game, and Robin Glynn sent along a prettier version of Numbers Game.

What's new as of mid-June: Carlos Rondão has sent along a prettier version of Tetris, and Jeff has volunteered Rubix. Try them out!

Of course, I've few in-bound links as of yet so this site might as well be invisible at the moment.

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