The new cheats menu in Vampire Survivors makes me wish more games had them

Image: Poncle

After using the cheat menu in Vampire Survivors 0.10.0 update, I wish more games had one.

If you haven't heard of it, Vampire Survivors is a wonderful game about leveling up and destroying a lot of monsters in a single run. You pick a starting character with certain attributes and a specific weapon, and you level up that weapon, other weapons, and other items as you defeat enemies. You don't have to worry about avoiding baddies since your weapons fire automatically.

The game launched in Early Access on Steam late last year, and has received regular updates that add things like new characters, weapons, power-ups, stages, and special items. The game is fun, but it can take a long time to get everything unlocked. I put 40 hours into Vampire Survivors, but the in-game menu says I have 26 things I can get. When I look at that list, I sometimes don't want to play anymore.

There is a new cheat menu in the game called the "Secrets" menu. It accepts codes to unlocked characters, special items, and stages, meaning that I can choose what I want to get. I still want to get everything unlocked by completing the requirements, but there are a few things I don't want to bother with, and thanks to the Secrets menu, I can easily get what I want.

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

The Secrets menu was unlocked by the developers of Vampire survivors. If you don't have a good grasp of the game, you won't be able to find the item that unlocks it. If you have gotten that far, I think you can make your own choices about what to cheat for.

The game is so slow that I am not able to enjoy the story in its entirety. I wish I could cheat a truck with infinite health, battery, and some kind of hover ability so I could easily make deliveries and see the game's story through, but I think I'm going to have to suffer through hours of frustrating exploration to learn what happens next to Sam Porter

Even if it doesn't sound fun to use, the spell to spin theUI is silly and I can appreciate it. Hopefully there will be more off-the-wall ideas in the 0.10.0 patch notes. Maybe it's a big head mode. If you want to know how tounlock the Secrets menu or what codes do, here is a GameFAQs guide.

Vampire survivors is available for $3 on steam. It works well on Steam Deck, one of the most popular games on the platform, though I haven't been able to enter any cheat code spells on the handheld gaming PC.