Dec 28 at 7:25am
Cheats, achievements and bonuses
As you might already know, we don't want to spend our time on balancing an unfinished game. Almost every version of the game adds new gameplay mechanics, and balancing all of them means taking away development time from adding new content. We'll definitely balance things out eventually when the time comes, but for now we've decided to add cheats into the game. We'll try to add them in 0.10, but no promises. It might happen later because 0.10 is shaping up to be pretty big.
Personally, I can't stand cheats, but I understand their value for other players. As you might know, we plan to add achievements in the game. Maybe in the next version or a bit later. But achievements are supposed to be rewards, you don't get to have them when you cheat. So turning cheats on will corrupt the save file forever. You'll be able to influence your money, energy, hunger and other parameters, but cheat save file won't have any achievements and its bonuses. And of course people who play fair will get the achievements. Everyone will get to decide what they prefer. Again it will work on a singular save file, if you decide to start the new game without cheats, you'll be able to get the achievements without any problems.
Now, about the protection of the offline version. We're not going spend a lot of time on it. Just minimal amount like encrypting the save files and some other things. We couldn't cheat in the offline client. We didn't really try all that much, though. Hopefully, it will be enough to add cheats/achievements and its bonuses for our patrons in the offline version too.
We'll probably add an option to log in as a Patron if you want Patron-exclusive bonuses in the offline version, but it will be a one time thing and you won't need to keep logging in every time or have an Internet connection to play offline.