A passing thought: if a game has implicit mechanics that can be exploited or explored by a player choosing to use a spreadsheet, it is probably very interesting to play.

Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop RPGs are an obvious candidate. While the popularity of D&D has gone up because it has become accessible to a less hardcore audience, you can still have a lot of fun min-maxing character builds with a spreadsheet.

Kerbal Space Program is fun, but it is vastly more enjoyable if you can calculate the delta V of rocket stages before mucking about in the VAB. Girly men use mods to do this for them. Real men use spreadsheets.

Stardew Valley can be played more optimally for profit by calculating the internal rate of return of the crops you choose to grow. The most practical way to do that is to use Excel’s XIRR function, or the equivalent in whatever spreadsheet you are using.

The Jagged Alliance series of games is the only one I know of that does not involve trade where comparative advantage is an implicit game mechanic. Finding the most cost effective mercenaries to hire is best done with a spreadsheet, considering that a level up also increases a merc’s salary by 50%.

I reserve the right to go into more detail on all of these examples in future blog posts. Especially the Jagged Alliance one, because I’ve wanted to write about comparative advantage in Jagged Alliance for about 10 years now, and because I started playing Jagged Alliance 3 this week.