Templates of Doom – A spreadsheet text adventure game (1985) (twitter.com)

58 points by taviso 3y ago ↗ HN

9 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 35.6 ms ] thread

I wonder if you could make an MMO with Google Sheets today?

I bet you could, depending how you pull/push the data. But were you thinking having the whole MMO in Google Sheets?

Totally. You have a base sheet that specifies how everything works, write access limited to developers. Every new players starts by cloning a template that links to the base sheet. It'll have the number crunching of EVE Online with the aesthetics of Dwarf Fortress!

throwanem 3y ago ↗

Given the absurd amount of optimization that goes into high-level play, a better question might be if you could make one without it.

ransom1538 3y ago ↗

Ive worked on facebook games that used Google Sheets as a config file. It's a silly idea, but really works.

thanatos519 3y ago ↗

I remember my dad playing this game! He was a master of spreadsheets and 4GL databases!

richardfey 3y ago ↗

I wonder if a copy of the full game can still be found?

kevinmchugh 3y ago ↗

This appears to be the website of the author: http://edugames.com/edugamesWebSite/home.htm

There's an email there you might reach out to, to see if you can get the full version

mbg721 3y ago ↗

Somebody much more skilled and ambitious than I am once made a working spreadsheet version of the board game Puerto Rico, complete with AI opponents. I think it's still floating around, but it uses macros, so you get all the warnings associated with that.