Spreadsheets are boring? Not anymore they're not, someone made a Fallout RPG in Excel

Fallout is very much flavor of the month, thanks to the success of the hit Prime Video show (we just finished it last night - what a finale), and so what next? Fallout games, of course, and here's something out of left-field.

For those who don't want to rekindle Fallout 4 - which has a current-gen update landing later today - you might want to play a new Fallout-inspired post-apocalyptic outing in Excel.

Yes, Excel is the medium in which you run 'Mercer' which describes itself as a Fallout-inspired adventure game.

How does that work? The gist of it is a blocky map rendered in the spreadsheet app which you can move your party around, visiting towns or vaults, and picking up quests.

That map exploration and quest completion is interspersed with battles, which are turn-based (much like the original Fallout RPG was, way back in 1997) and are realized D&D-style (initiative rolls, then rolling to hit versus armor class).

Yes, it's a pretty basic game, and you can see how the different elements play out in the YouTube clip above. However, given that this adventure is running in Excel, it's a pretty impressive achievement from developer 'The Storyteller' (aka Dynamic Pear on YouTube).

Excel boundaries are being pushed considerably these days, and as Tom's Hardware - which spotted Mercer - reminds us, a full 3D game engine has been rendered in the spreadsheet app. (That too is predictably basic, but still quite something).

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