Hey folks!

So I've been digging a lot into Fox n Forest's kickstarter, etc, and as a nod to many retro games, the designers deliberately built in some cheat codes that can be entered on the title screen to do various things. In the linked clip, I briefly show off the 'unlock all levels' cheat code as an example:

Currently, the category rules do not explicitly ban cheat codes, although none of the runs or runners use them. I'm asking for us to consider banning some or all cheat codes from certain categories; there have been hints suggesting for example that 'start with all hearts' might be a code that exists. An invincibility code, if one exists, would break the game, etc.

In this case, even 'all levels' lets you immediately run to Spiteful Spider (3-3) and beat it, unlocking blue arrows - and automatically unlocking all previous arrows. This affects the flow and pacing of the game considerably!

Picture demonstrating sequence break enabled by use of developer cheat code:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3mo78b97h1ywz9x/FoxNForestsSeqCheat.PNG?dl=0

On the bright side of things, using something like this code could enable more unusual categories should the speedrun get more competitive!

We might however want to decide which categories, if any, allow the use of in-game cheat codes before it becomes an issue. A little foresight can save a lot of headache! Some games have 'no cheats' and 'with cheats' categories - do we want to do likewise? Only permit certain cheats?

Amusing side effect of the 'all levels' cheat code: One can fight Spiteful Spider, use the green arrows to beat Hysterical Hyena, and then immediately fight the witch with 2 pieces of bark, 0 items, 0 gold, and all arrows

However the witch's final form is impossible in this state because Rick's pirouette cannot reach her nose after she takes his arrows - he needs at least the spin attack to hit her

This means hypothetically one could win using the cheat code by defeating one of the first three bosses (for green arrow), beating the hyena, hitting a quick bonus level for money, and then buying spin attack so one could kill the witch

Using cheat codes is usually not allowed in any speedrun, which is why it's not specifically banned in the rules. At least that's my take on it. For some games it may be added in the rule set, but I've never seen a speedrun use cheats, so it's basically a commonly agreed upon ground rule for every game.

Okay! Wasn't sure if that was an oversight or not, so I thought I'd broach the topic just to make sure