Programmer Creates Fully-Functional XCOM Game For EXCEL

When you're stuck in the office and you're bored, you start to get creative. If your company has locked down your internet access, you're stuck making the best with whatever programs are installed on your PC. Back in the day, you at least had Pinball to keep you occupied, but unless you're still running XP, you don't even have that. One programmer figured out a way to play a pretty good game using a program that almost everyone in an office has: Microsoft Excel.

I've spent most of my adult life working on computers, but I've never really mastered the advanced functions of Excel. Since I so rarely use the application for anything more than a simple table, I feel accomplished when I set a box to output the sum of the ones above it. Redditor crruzi, however, managed to build a fully-functioning XCOM game that plays inside of Excel.

We're not talking about something basic and barely functional. This game has many of the features that you'd find in any of the other games in the series. This includes classes, perks, destructible terrain, and more. There's even a level editor, should you want to make your own maps.

crruzi has dubbed his game EXLCOM, and says that it takes place between XCOM: Enemy Within and XCOM 2, which is due out next year. If you need to kill some time at the office, feel free to download the game here.

VIA: Polygon