The Joy of Cheating (in a single-player game)

[rowyn]

Back in 2015, I was an avid fan of Failbetter Games’s Fallen London. I bought Sunless Sea, another game in the same setting, when it was released. Sunless Sea was intended as a roguelike: when your avatar died, you started the game over from the beginning (though you could inherit some stuff from your last avatar). It had an ‘easy mode’ to avoid permadeath, but discouraged players from trying that.

I played the game for around three hours total, over the course of a few days. By that point, I was bored of re-playing the same content after dying. Rather than switching to the ‘easy mode’, I quit playing after my next death.

About two weeks ago, Vicorva streamed Sunless Sea for one session, and I thought about trying the game again.

A few days later, I fired it up. I thought about playing on default mode again and immediately noped out. I didn’t remember how the ‘easy mode’ worked and didn’t find anything under options, so I searched the web. I came upon this thread on Steam.

To summarize: one respondent said ‘Merciful Mode’ lets you keep a second save (so you can restore from that instead of restarting on death) but that this doesn’t help much because you can still only save when in port. A different respondent outlined how to edit the autosave.json file to give yourself as much money as you want.

I went ‘huh’, then went off to do something else.

I have no tolerance for cheating in a competitive game: if my cheating will make someone else’s game experience worse, clearly I should not cheat.

But in a single-player, non-competitive game like Sunless Sea, what I do only affects me. This is a game that I have owned for 8 years and played for a total of three hours, 8 years ago.I have already tried the normal mode and decided it’s not for me. Whether I decide from here to continue with “don’t play at all” or “cheat”, no one but me benefits or is harmed.

I’ve never actually hacked or even run a mod on a game before, though. When I’ve cheated in single-player games in the past, it’s been via save-scumming or some other exploit of the game mechanics. (Or by looking up solutions online to puzzles I can’t solve or don't have the patience for.)

So a few days ago, I decided to try the ‘edit the autosave’ idea. The thread was from seven years ago and I half-expected it wouldn’t work: I’d corrupt the save or it would have no effect, either because I did it wrong or because Failbetter had changed the save file. But the cheat worked just as described. I also wasn’t sure how much difference having limitless money would make to game play.

I restarted the game and the tutorial went “Wow, you have a lot of money. You should buy a better ship!” So I bought a better ship and some better equipment to put on it and then went zailing.

And then paid the premium to buy more fuel and supplies at the first port I reached because I was low on both.

And then loaded up on both fuel and supplies at the next port because I didn’t need free cargo space for anything in particular.

I zailed about for two hours, exploring and reading the story bits and Doing Things. My expensive ship was tough enough to win the accidental battles I got into.

The game was actually fun.

I haven’t played since, because I don’t spend a lot of time on games anymore and my sister came into town on Saturday night so I spent Sunday with her. (She came for a work conference and is dealing with that today.) But I expect I will play more during my vacation this week. It’s nice to finally get some enjoyment out of this game I got all those years ago.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah.
I know there are people for whom games being difficult is what makes them fun, but I like games being easy.
I found a starter that has cheats for Wandering Village, like giving you infinite knowledge or free building or no damage to buildings. I like it.

[wyld_dandelyon]

When I want something hard to do, I write fiction or songs, or do something else where the difficulty is rewarded by providing some accomplishment. Games are for goofing off, relaxing, or meditating. Or for being, essentially, a fidget spinner while my brain works on something in the background. A single-purpose game that's actually hard defeats the purpose, for me.

[tuftears]

It makes sense, sometimes you just Don't Have Time to Try, Try Again, you just want to enjoy the story. I've started playing some videogames on easy because I'm not here to be frustrated by Stupidly Tough Boss Battles.

[ioplokon]

came across this bc i just picked up Sunless Seas again & was interested if anyone else was playing.

1. Definitely don't think there are ethical issues about modding pc games/any games in a non esports context. Mods have been a part of PC gaming from the start!

2. I'd also recommend the character traits mods in the Steam discussion thread (https://steamcommunity.com/app/304650/discussions/0/133257324794665332/). These can alter stuff like ship speed, hunger, etc & have flavor text to explain why your captain might have that boost (my favorite is the Fearless one, which reduces the terror gain when you're sailing alone - I never play w/ it bc I'm very protective of my crew, but still think it's neat).

Anyway, happy zailing!