If you've grown up with gaming, you'll probably be familiar with the idea of cheat codes. These are button combinations or lines of text to input that have a wide range of different effects, from invincibility to infinite ammo and classics like Big Head Mode. Some titles still feature them, but they're not nearly as prominent as they used to be. Luckily for those sneaky and deceptive players among us, though, there are still lots of games that have cheating mechanics built right in.
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Between them, these titles encourage you to stack the deck in your favor (literally), cut the HP of tricky enemies, and even visit the Cheat Shop to give your characters a handy boost or five. The things we'll do in the name of victory.
5 Balatro
Some Of These Jokers Really Are A Joke
Now, you don't need to be an experienced poker player to enjoy Balatro. In fact, it might even be helpful if you haven't played before, because beyond the basics of the different hands, this certainly isn't the iconic card game as you might know it. It's more about taking the essence of poker and tearing it to shreds.
Absurd combos and fantastical joker effects are what Balatro is all about. Familiar hands such as the flush, straight, and full house are available to make, but you'll have jokers to boost them, planet cards to increase their score multipliers. Another joker might then multiply the effect of the previous one, and you can use tarot or spectral cards to, for example, change the suit of a given card or make it a high-scoring glass card that has a risk of permanently shattering when played. There's such a wide range of different card effects, and they can all be so potent, that experimenting and watching your score climb into the multi-millions (and far beyond) is a joy. The box art blurb deems Balatro "a hypnotically satisfying deckbuilder where you play illegal poker hands," and that's exactly what it is. It's an excellent deckbuilder that's quite beginner-friendly.
4 Rogue Lords
Cut Foes Down A Peg Or Two
Rogue Lords is a horror-themed roguelite in which the player, as the Devil, commands minions including The Headless Horseman of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow fame, Hecate, and Dracula. The aim is to destroy the forces of good that rise against you, using a party of up to three party members to engage in battles. They fight directly for you with the player choosing the skills used, balancing offense, defense, and supportive techniques as necessary.
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Journeying across the map, visiting locations and engaging in random events is the standard fare that genre fans will love, as is the increasingly challenging nature of the combat. Fortunately, that's where Devil Mode comes in. You, as the Devil, have an HP meter, and you can spend some of it to essentially pause a battle and cheat in various ways. You can shift a troublesome status from an ally to an enemy or steal a bonus they may have buffed themselves with. You can heal a party member or cut an opponent's current HP. This even allows you to remove the cooldown of a key ability. It's a sophisticated system because you pay the cost in increments, meaning that, instead of small top-ups, you can fully heal a team member or instantly remove a key foe from the fight if you can pay the cost. At the same time, it's got to be used strategically, because it's an immediate game over if your HP is fully depleted. Beginners should keep some tricky things in mind.
3 Card Shark
How Many Ways Are There To Cheat At Cards?
Card Shark caught the eye of many on its initial review for its wonderful, painterly aesthetic. Even more importantly, though, it has a gameplay as unique and varied as its story. "It all began on a misty morning of 1743 near Pau, in the South of France," the intro tells us, before instantly dropping us in the shoes of a young man who works in Ms. Porterhouse's tavern. That day, he serves the Comte de Saint-Germaine a drink. The player does so manually, taking care not to overfill the glass, and that's the perfect introduction to the game and how it will play out.
The Comte takes a liking to the young man, and invites him to become an accomplice, of sorts, in his devious plans to get rich(er) by cheating in card games. He explains techniques, such as peeking while serving the table drinks and then wiping the table in a pattern that corresponds to the suit of cards the opponent has most of. Other tricks, such as dealing while using a mirrored surface on the table to give a quick view of each card, are added later. Each of these cheating moves plays out as a minigame, advancing the story of the Comte de Saint-Germaine and his companion's journey. It's a journey with wickedly witty dialogue and some surprising twists.
2 The Disgaea Series
A Quick Stop At The Cheat Shop
Disgaea is a series that's unafraid to be theatrical, from its vastly inflated damage numbers to its incredible character designs and other wacky ideas. As a JRPG, it's also home to an awful lot of grinding, which can be a bit of a chore. Fortunately, though, there's where one of its more unique (and absolutely welcomed) concepts comes in: The Cheat Shop.
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Beginning with Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness, this fine establishment would become a mainstay of the series, and has something to offer players of all skill levels. It offers a range of different effects, from increasing Weapon Mastery to buffing the Mana you gain. You can even make enemies more powerful if you crave an extra challenge. It works on a simple slider basis, but there's a bit more to it than that, because you will typically need to reduce one of these multipliers to increase something else. This is usually the sort of thing you might find in a game's debug menu, but the Disgaea titles really seem to want players to manipulate their parameters as they like.
1 Screencheat
The Oldest Cheating Technique In The Book
During a good old-fashioned splitscreen co-op session, it's typically not long before somebody is accused of screenpeeking. If a player has a reputation for hiding in a sneaky spot and sniping in an FPS, for instance, this is quite the effective way to expose them. It may not be particularly sporting, but there's no doubt that it's just a part of gaming in this fashion. You can't be expected to never look away from your allocated quarter of the TV screen, so why not embrace the cheating? That's what Screencheat is all about.
You can't see your opponents, but you can see where they are by watching their movements. You can also tell which weapon they're using, as it's fired/thrust/thrown. There's a ludicrous selection, too, from the Bear Bomb to the Hobby Horse and Candelabra. It all looks utterly silly, but that's not to say that it's just a throwaway party game. You can pull off all kinds of hilarious trickery, and each mode's so different. There's a rather standard deathmatch, but there's also the likes of One Shot, in which you literally just have the one and can only reload once everybody else has used theirs too.
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