Back in 1996, millions of people became emotionally attached to tiny virtual alien pets called Tamagotchis.
Naturally, I decided to rebuild the entire experience inside Microsoft Excel.
Because apparently spreadsheets are game engines now.
Watch The Full Video
If you want to see the full development process (including the point where Excel nearly collapsed under the pressure of managing 3 simultaneous virtual pets), you can watch the video here:
What Is Included?
This Excel Tamagotchi remake includes:
- Real-time virtual pet gameplay
- Hunger, happiness and health systems
- Sleep mechanics
- Aging and evolution systems
- Cleaning / poop management
- Animated UI elements
- Multiple difficulty modes
- Fully playable VBA-powered gameplay
And yes…
Hard Mode lets you manage THREE Tamagotchis simultaneously inside one workbook.
Which turned out to be significantly more stressful than expected.
Difficulty Modes
Easy Mode
A classic single-pet Tamagotchi experience.
Perfect for:
- casual players,
- nostalgia enjoyers,
- and people who don’t want Excel emotionally terrorising them.
Medium Mode
Manage TWO Tamagotchis at the same time.
Things begin to spiral surprisingly quickly.
Hard Mode
Three simultaneous Tamagotchis.
Inside Excel.
At this point the spreadsheet stops feeling like office software and starts feeling like a psychological endurance test.
Download The Game
Download Link
The game is completely free to download and play.
Important Setup Instructions
Because this game uses VBA macros, you may need to:
- Download the Excel workbook
- Open the file
- Save-As a new workbook version
- Enable Macros / Enable Content
- Begin your descent into spreadsheet-based pet management
Depending on your Excel security settings, macros may be disabled by default.
Fully Open VBA Code
For anyone interested in coding or game development:
All VBA macros are fully unlocked and available to explore.
You are free to:
- inspect the systems,
- learn from the code,
- modify mechanics,
- or discover just how much programming was required to simulate alien pet poop inside Excel.
Why Make Games In Excel?
Honestly?
Because it’s funny.
There’s something deeply entertaining about pushing software far beyond what it was ever intended to do.
Excel was designed for:
- accounting,
- budgets,
- forecasting,
- and corporate suffering.
Not real-time Tamagotchi simulations.
And yet… somehow it works.
Future Excel Games
This project started as a simple nostalgia remake and somehow evolved into a fully playable spreadsheet game.
Which probably means things are only going to get more ridiculous from here.
If you have ideas for other games that should absolutely NOT exist inside Excel, leave a comment on the YouTube video.
Final Thoughts
I’m genuinely surprised by how well Microsoft Excel handled this project.
Although after building it, I’m now dangerously close to treating Excel as a legitimate game engine.
Which feels like a terrible path to go down.
Thanks for checking out the project — and good luck surviving Hard Mode.
You’re going to need it.
The StoryTeller 