Be a skeletal accountant in this spreadsheet game

Skeleton with keyboard and pencil
(Image credit: Jordan Grayson via Wizards of the Coast)

In the world of video games there are some of us who are very, very happy to play a game that looks like a spreadsheet. Game designers, on the other hand, spend a lot of time designing systems inside of spreadsheets. Alexander King, a professor of game design at NYU's Game Center, gave his students an assignment: Make a prototype game that exists within a spreadsheet.

One of these projects, by design student Jordan Grayson, is Dividends & Decay: Accounting for the Damned, and it's somewhere between a joke about my favorite kind of game and an actual example of my favorite kind of game. Described thusly: "Play as an undead accountant managing the evil spreadsheets of a necromancer!"

You can play the game for free by just making a copy of a Google Sheet. In it, you balance the books of an unholy army by processing entries into the logs as they appear. Fight a battle? Balance the books to account for lost equipment, then sign off on the incoming. Evil Overlord supply some weapons to the goblin resistance? Deduct those from the totals. Steal potions from elves? Add those to inventory, but remember we didn't pay for them at all.

Be sure that everything balances at the end, of course.

It's a weird little thing to do, and it's just a prototype that doesn't take much time, but I was sure as hell amused by it. You can try Dividends & Decay via Jordan Grayson's itch.io page.

Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

Read more
A catgirl with long white hair and ears
At least it's not NFTs this time: The new Wizardry RPG is a gacha game
Keyart for Halls of Torment showing a single figure facing down an army of wratihs.
Halls of Torment review
Double headed wizard man holding arms up looking sad
A tabletop RPG designer made a game about the way FromSoft NPCs say cryptic stuff and go 'heh heh heh' all the time, and the result is a love letter to the 'grubby little weirdos'
A man turns away from an open window while monsters gather in the dark
Look Outside is a survival horror RPG where you absolutely should not look outside
screenshot from magic scroll-making game enscroll
Try this cute freebie about crafting magical scrolls to pay your student loans
A goblin's face getting melted off by a magic crystal in Thieves of the Tome.
Do goblin dice math, slap your D&D players with severed troll limbs, and take revenge on Shakespeare in this year's wonderfully weird ZineQuest RPG kickstarters
Latest in Sim
An ancient, angry stone mech from No Man's Sky's new Relics update
No Man’s Sky lets you unearth ancient, angry mechs in the astro-archaeology filled Relics update
Dwarf Fortress adventure mode art
After 23 years of making Dwarf Fortress, even its creator is still 'terrified' of drowning all his dwarves with aquifers: 'Part of the problem is we are just not good at videogames'
Tarn Adams, who cofounded Bay 12 Games with his brother Zach, talks about their single-player simulation game "Dwarf Fortress" during an interview at their home office in Poulsbo, Washington, west of Seattle, on December 9, 2022. - A cult favorite among indie game fans, "Dwarf Fortress" has been available for purchase on the Steam online store since December 6, a first for this title that has been distributed for free since its debut in 2006. The real-time management game, set in a medieval-fantasy world and involving overseeing a group of dwarves seeking to build a mighty fortress, has climbed to the fourth best-selling weekly title on Steam. (Photo by Jason Redmond / AFP) (Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)
Dwarf Fortress' creator is so tired of hearing about AI: 'Press a button and it writes a really sh*tty, wrong essay about something—and they still take your job'
Decorations in TCG Card Shop Simulator
TCG Card Shop Simulator finally adds the ability to decorate our stores, and suddenly all my profits are being spent on adorable Pigni posters
A person on a snowmobile riding a track in the forest in game Sledders.
Powder enthusiasts seem pretty pleased with new physics-based realistic snowmobile sim Sledders
Dean Hall at GDC 2025.
Outer space inspired DayZ's Dean Hall to become a modder and game developer, and now he's making a Kerbal successor called Kitten Space Agency
Latest in News
Monster Hunter Wilds' stockpile master studying a manifest
As layoffs and studio closures continue to deathroll the western AAA industry, analyst points out 5 of 8 major Japanese companies hit all-time share prices this year
A woman wearing a VR headset with dramatic, colourful lighting across the background
'World’s smallest LEDs' could lead to accurately lit screens with 127,000 pixels per inch and much more immersive VR
The NES themed 8BitDo Retro mechanical gaming keyboard on a blue background
I love the 8BitDo Retro C64 keyboard but I'd pick its cheaper NES-themed model near its lowest price ever during Amazon's Big Spring Sale
gta 6 trailer
Publishers 'don't want to be anywhere near' Grand Theft Auto 6 when it launches: 'It's proving to be very stressful'
Microsoft's iconic Bliss wallpaper
From pixels to pinot: The Windows XP 'Bliss' wallpaper hill was real and this is what it looks like now
A female Zoi making two hearts with her fingers.
Following 24 hours of Denuvo-based backlash, Inzoi is taking a surprising step and removing it entirely: 'We want to sincerely apologise for not aligning more closely with player expectations'