What the Hall of Tortured Souls actually is
The easter egg was not a full shooter. Yahoo Tech's retelling calls it a Doom-style 3D maze hidden inside Excel 95 that displays the credits of the designers who worked on it. The "Doom-like" label describes the first-person view and the 3D space. It does not describe the gameplay.
Those who found it described a garish, pixelated space. Doom-like green pools, blue pillars that resemble tentacles, and walls that look like Minesweeper tiles are part of the scenery. The names of Excel 95's developers scrolled endlessly on the walls.
The name fits the theme. One Excel team member from 1995 to 1996, Ross Comer, described it as a joke combining the Doom theme with the long hours the team worked to ship Excel. That account was quoted in a Global Excel Summit post. It is a single recollection, not an official Microsoft statement. I found no primary Microsoft source explaining why the egg was added, so treat the motive as team lore.
How the original trigger worked
The original sequence only works in Excel 95. The long-running easter-egg archive eeggs.com lists these steps:
- Open Excel 95 with a blank worksheet.
- Go down to row 95 and select the whole row.
- Press Tab to move to column B.
- Open Help > About Microsoft Excel.
- Hold Ctrl+Alt+Shift and click the Tech Support button.
The archive says the Hall of Tortured Souls window then appears. A turn-around and the code excelkfa opens a hidden wall. Its contributor notes that the egg requires Microsoft Excel 95. Commenters on that page also report that it doesn't work in Excel 97.
The "kfa" part is a nod to Doom. Archive commenters point out that idkfa was Doom's famous cheat. That is a reader theory, not a confirmed statement from the developers.
Why it won't work in today's Excel
Don't try the row-95 trick in Microsoft 365. A Microsoft Q&A thread from January 2025 asked how to reach the egg. A volunteer moderator replied that it was removed decades ago. A Microsoft support specialist agreed that it was removed as Office was updated. Microsoft Q&A is community support, not a formal product history. Even so, it matches the archive's "Excel 95 only" requirement.
Running it on a modern PC
A GitHub project called HallOfTorturedSouls publishes the game's decompiled source code. It also provides a standalone build. The repository says this version can be compiled to run on modern Windows from the source. This is a compile-it-yourself project. It is not an official Microsoft download, and it doesn't run inside Excel.
The repository documents two build routes:
- Visual Studio: open the included solution file and build the project.
- w64devkit: open a w64devkit terminal and run
makein thesrcdirectory.
The XDA Developers writer who prompted this story used VS Code to open the folder, build and launch the game. The repository's own documented routes are the two above, so use those if VS Code gives you trouble.
What the maintainer changed
The standalone build is not a byte-for-byte copy of the original. The maintainer lists several changes:
- A
mainfunction was added to call the game's setup and loop directly. - The main loop now sleeps for 20 ms. Without that, the game is unplayably fast on modern CPUs.
- Clicking outside the window no longer quits the game.
The code comes from Ghidra's decompiler output. The maintainer warns that function and variable names may not match what they represent. The floating-point math code was replaced with simplified code for now. This is a faithful-in-spirit reconstruction, not a pristine release.
The tiny window
XDA's author says the game is hard-coded to a small window with no easy way to scale it up. They used Windows Magnifier and a higher display scale to cope. That is one user's experience, and the repository doesn't mention a resize option. The small window may also be original behavior. A speedrun guide says the engine limited the window size because it had to run inside Excel under Windows. It adds that Doom-style programs ran in full DOS with all system resources available.
If the window is too small for you, try these in turn:
- Press Win and the plus key to open Magnifier, then zoom in.
- Raise the display scale in Windows display settings.
- Try it on a smaller, higher-DPI laptop screen, which XDA's author says worked better.
Cheat codes: a correction
The popular cheat is EXCELKFA. The maintainer says that in their reconstruction you only need to type XLKFA to open the secret wall. They also found a second code, XLU2. It enables a "Random Thoughts" section at the end of the scrolling credits texture. The maintainer also says holding Ctrl while moving lets you fly across ledges, which makes the secret zigzag path easier. These are the repository author's findings from reading the code. They are not Microsoft documentation.
Other Office easter eggs, with a caution
XDA mentions Word 97's hidden pinball game and Excel 97's flight simulator. It also says such hidden extras attracted scrutiny over security concerns. I couldn't verify that last claim. I found no reliable source tying these particular easter eggs to a security incident or to their removal. Undocumented code is a fair concern in general. Treat the claim as plausible commentary, not established history.
Mundane footnote for admins: nothing here affects a current Microsoft 365 deployment. The egg is gone from modern Excel, and the standalone build is an unofficial hobby project, so don't compile it on a production machine without reviewing it first.
Bottom line
- The Hall of Tortured Souls was a hidden 3D credits maze in Excel 95. It was never a full Doom-style game.
- The original trigger works only in Excel 95. Microsoft community responses say it was removed decades ago.
- You can play a reconstruction by building the GitHub project with Visual Studio or w64devkit. Expect a small window and some rough edges.
XLKFAreportedly works as the wall cheat in the reconstruction, andXLU2unlocks extra credits text.
It's a fun reminder that even the world's most serious spreadsheet once had a hidden 3D maze in it.