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A jam submission

Excel VBA Dungeon EscapeView game page

An RPG/Dungeon Escape game coded entirely in Microsoft Excel using VBA
Submitted by Weenie Walker Games (@weenie_walker) — 9 hours, 36 minutes before the deadline
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Excel VBA Dungeon Escape's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Gameplay#61.7323.000
Creativity#62.8875.000
Interpretation of Theme and Completeness of Game#72.5984.500
Graphics, Sound and Polish#71.7323.000
Overall#72.2373.875

Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Extra information about your game
A dungeon crawler RPG coded entirely in Microsoft Excel!

Which theme did you choose?
All three themes

Which BASIC did you use?
Visual Basic for Applications within Microsoft Excel

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Comments

Host

Hi....after I decompressed the compressed file, I discovered that there was no EXE file. Then I read the posts on this webpage. Then I  knew that Excel was required to run the game.  Actually,  I don't have Excel on my computers.  Anyway, the comments on this game on this webpage are really good. Well done!!!

Developer

Thanks for trying to play it. Without Excel on your computer, I do not think it is playable. I did try using the online version found at the excel.new website but it does not appear that site can run macros (a safe and reasonable security setting).

Submitted (1 edit)

This is a great idea; I will definitely try to play this when I get my hands on a recent version of Excel. Both my version (2000 :D) and LibreOffice.org know nothing about ListObjects and therefore fail.

Developer

I appreciate you trying. Yeah, I definitely make no guarantees for Excel versions over 20 years old, hehe.

GAMEPLAY: 3 / 5

I also had problems getting the game to work at first but eventually figured it out.

You need to right-click on the Excel file itself, select "Properties" and then on one of the tabs check the "Unblock" option at the bottom so that it will run the Macros properly.

As for the game, it's fairly intuitive. The Element system made it a bit more interesting. 

The pace of combat needs to be faster and it could have been a little more obvious that the map scrolls off the screen.

CREATIVITY: 5 / 5

I mean, you made this in EXCEL. I've heard of others making simple Excel games but to see it done and integrate a version of BASIC was pretty darn cool! And I would argue that some areas might have scored higher if it weren't for the fact that making a game in Excel probably results in a lot of undesired restrictions and limitations.

GRAPHICS / SOUND / POLISH: 3 / 5

The map graphics are ok, but the battle graphics are quite a bit better. This game reminds me a lot of an old NES game I used to play -- The Immortal. I also appreciate how large the graphics were so I wasn't squinting at my screen from 2 inches away.

INTERPRETATION OF THEME AND COMPLETENESS: 5 / 5

I think this is the only game in the Jam that utilizes all 3 themes.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your suggestion on fixing the macros. I knew it could be an issue given security settings, but was hoping most people could try it.

Really appreciate the feedback. I agree the combat could have been quicker. My goal was to give the game time to "pause" and redraw the screen but depending on how quickly your computer processes the code, it might have taken longer than I was initially planning. (I was more concerned about showing the result of each hit and didn't want to have the player miss that.) As for the screen map, I was trying to see if there was a way to show edges of other tiles, but ran out of time before I could do a deep dive into that. Because of the way I am drawing the graphics, I am not sure it is possible to show half a tile. I debated about having the screen scroll as the player got within a couple cells of the edge (and had done that once in a testing project I did long ago), but decided to keep it simple with the map and expand the functionality of the game itself instead.

Thanks again for playing my game!

Submitted

I dont know how to run the game......  o(TヘTo)

Developer(+1)

I'm sorry you are having trouble. Depending on your computer's security settings, you may not be able to run the macro and play the game. You should be able to "Enable macros" via a message bar at the top of the screen when you start Excel.  However, if you don't see it and you have appropriate permissions to change Excel security settings, you can go to the File - Options menu and then clicking the "Trust Center" on the left. After clicking on the "Trust Center Settings" options, you will get the option under the "Message Bar" side menu to show a message when macros are blocked. Restarting the Excel workbook should now show you a message that the macros are blocked but you should be able to enable them.

If this doesn't work for you, I am sorry you were not able to try my game, but thank you for trying to play it!

Submitted(+1)

Excel as the ultimate programming framework/game engine, I like it!