In my current project I have created a list of potential Easter Eggs and strange game modes (similar to ‘big head mode’ in Halo and Jak 2). These Easter Eggs won’t be easy to find and some might not be found. In the cases of Halo and Jak 2, the player needs to earn ‘big head mode’ by finding (and earning) enough of a particular item.
I also like games that allow the player a lot of freedom and weird things that enhance the experience of playing - GTA did this well with the flying cars cheat, where the player didn’t need to earn anything, but just press buttons in a sequence.
Do you think one implementation process (i.e. cheat codes) is somehow better suited than another within different scenarios?
You could combine the two approaches - let the players earn them the hard way, and include an options page which explains how to earn/find them, but leave some cheat codes hidden for those that want a shortcut. I think Timesplitters Future Perfect did this: the cheats could be unlocked by entering the right key sequence on the cheat page, or by doing some of the challenges in challenge mode.
You could even make the cheat codes be a temporary option (i.e. once they stop playing, they lose it and must reenter the cheat to reenable it), and earning it makes it permanently available in the options menu.
Historically, cheats have been included to aid in debugging a game, so that the developer doesn’t have to replay the whole thing to debug a specific portion of the game, or at least doesn’t have to spend the amount of time a normal player would have to spend to get to a point they want to debug.
The most famous example is the Konami code (Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start)
As games have evolved, such an approach has become less common; we have better ways to debug a game than leaving “test” code in the production version of our application. In my case, I use a cross-scene object called an Ambassador that I set up prior to a debug run to establish a game state that I want to test.
Butts mode from Shovel Knight. Do something like that.
Ok, to be serious. If you add cheat codes, make sure they are optional only. Do not make a game where having fun is relying on stupid or game breaking cheats. Cheats can be for any game but a game shouldn’t be built around the cheats.
They’re usually put on last by developers now days since we don’t use them for testing often.
Keep in mind most cheat codes you’d find in Nintendo Power were designed specifically for Nintendo Power. Which is to say the developer makes a deal to create a couple cheat codes as part of their publishing agreement, those codes are then given to NP. It wasn’t like they hacked the games or something, most original cheat codes weren’t debug items, they were to sell magazines.
In the old days die hard gamers may have learnt about the codes from magazines but that would still have given a month or 2 of people playing without them, as well as a large number of players that never knew about them because they didn’t read those magazines.
That isn’t the case now. The first few players may play to find the cheat codes but after that people will just google for them so you might as well design the game assuming everyone will eventually have access to them even if they have just purchased the game & installed it. This will be a bigger design impact than it sounds.
Cheat codes are a dangerous proposition. As pointed out, they will spread quickly on the internet. You run the risk of new players using the cheat codes and never experiencing the game. This can lead to a short experiance.
The age of empires 2 cheats were classics for this. It was so much fun to have cars with machine guns and just now everything down. Or get effectively infinite resources and build massive armies. However after about ten minutes of this all of the levels felt the same. It was easy to quit at this point from boredom.
On the other hand there the potential for some fun meta gaming in today’s cloud based environment. A system that tracks players use of the cheat code and changes the code once it has been used a certian number of times, or once a certian percentage of the player base are using it.
With effective community engagement this could be quite a fun ecosystem.
& also have the effect from using the cheat time based as well so people that want to keep using it have to keep hunting for what it is. Or randomly change/generate it every hour or two or each time the game is started.
I enjoy finding cheats in the game it self. Like if you find a note that tell you some thing about the story and some one wrote a telephone number in one corner that on the first glance have no use but used on the right place give you some reward like
I always find thinking about Easter eggs early in development isn’t the best of ideas. Someone I knew who made a game project in uni filled it to the brim with Easter eggs and cheats till it got to be one big inside joke of a mess that struggled to retain its own identity and make sense.
And as said before hand cheats used to be used for testing purposes, so use wisely, if even at all.