Cave Digger – All Cheat Codes and How to Enable Cheats

You’ve beaten the game, but now you want to play around with it. So here are all the debug commands the developers snuck into the game!

Note: These codes were made for internal debugging only by the devs, who knew the repercussions. They weren’t meant for us to use. If any of them break our games, we probably shouldn’t complain to them about it. They’re not an official part of the game, so might change at any patch, as their debugging needs to change.

This knowledge may spoil the game for you if you use it. But if you’ve already completed it once, these commands make it much more fun to play around on your second play-through. I guess you could argue these cheats add replay value while you’re saving up for Cave Digger 2! which is awesome, by the way, and getting more awesome by the day. Buy it now while it’s still unfinished, so it’s still cheap!

How to Enable Cheats

To enable the combos, press Shift + H + U all at the same time. A sound should play to let you know they’re enabled. This also initializes the leaderboard. Achievements will be okay with this and using cheats will not prevent achievements from triggering.

The number keys listed in the cheats must be those above the main keyboard, not on the keypad. Unless otherwise stated, no sound plays to confirm you triggered them, though if you turn on the verbose debugging cheat, it’ll log to your data file whenever you use a cheat.

Cave Digger Cheat Codes

• Insert – Add $5111 to your bank. Will play cash register “ka-ching!” sound.
• PageUp/PageDown – Teleport the train to the previous/next biome’s track, with you in it. You don’t need the necessary train parts.
• LeftAlt + 1, LeftAlt + 2 and LeftAlt + 3 – Set TimeScale to run at 40%/100%/200% of normal speed.
• Pause/Break – Freeze time: Toggle the TimeScale between 0% speed and 100% normal speed.
• LeftShift + V – Make the next floor in the elevator be the Vault.
• Backspace – Start a competitive run. Unsure if this works anymore.
• LeftShift + D – Toggle the debug logging, writing more info to your output log.
• LeftShift + U – Add 1 to the “Run Number”.

Run Number

The “Run Number” is how many times you’ve been down the elevator:

• You start at Run# -1, which is the intro tutorial, so this might let you skip the tutorial.
• The First saloon radio clip only plays if Run # is less than 3, so you can skip that clip.
• Some saloon buyable are only available after a certain number of runs.
• Some nuke endings care about whether you detonate it on a different run than when you dropped it.
• Some other code is given the number, but all seem to ignore it.
• Maybe other (game-breaking) repercussions.

TimeScale

The TimeScale is the thing you can slow down, speed up, or even halt completely through cheats. Not everything is affected by game time. Your movement, for instance, is always real-time, unscaled.

Figuring out exactly what is affected by it is tricky. But here’s what I believe to be affected:

• Physics
• The duration and pitch of played audio clips.
• The duration of any fade-to-black or fade-back-in, such as before the end credits, or when putting the VR helmet on, etc.

Hitting the end credits, or restarting the game, will reset the time scale back to normal. Some of the nuke endings slow time right down, overwriting any value you had here. Since these endings happen before the end credits, you’ll notice that the fade to black for the end credits goes quite slow, too.