Programmer Recreates Civilization Using Microsoft Excel

If Sid Meier’s Civilization has taught me anything, it’s that the game has a very deep level of complexity. One that is easy to learn, but very difficult to master. Oh, and that Mahatma Gandhi is a warmongering lunatic who rather than pushing the big red nuclear button, prefers instead to spam it!

In a report via PCGamesN, however, one person has managed to recreate the original 1991 release. While that, in itself, might not sound too impressive, what if I told you that they did this using only Microsoft Excel?… Yes, the spreadsheet tool!

Civilization Recreated in Microsoft Excel

The person, known only as ‘Solly’ has revealed their game design with a video showing the game running within Microsoft Excel. Although he openly admits that it is in a rather basic form at the moment, it is still amazingly impressive that this was possible within a software program designed for anything but gaming! I mean, did you ever have anything close to fun while using Excel?

The concept is his entry to the OLC (One Lone Coder) jam competition and, based on what we can see, he’s got a good chance of winning!

What Do We Think?

At the time of writing the game works under the basic ‘destruction’ premise. So, for me at least, on the plus side, there’s none of that diplomacy business to bother about! Solly has, however, said that if the public show interest in it, he’ll be more than happy to continue the work. Specifically to look to add more features from the original release.

It’s certainly ambitious, but you have to applaud the clearly huge amount of effort this required. He must know his way around a spreadsheet for sure! I wonder if he’ll consider doing my tax return next year?…

What do you think? Are you impressed with the work here? Are you amazed that this was even possible? – Let us know in the comments!