How to Hack Android Games [Tutorial]

Alright, we know this is lame. Cheating on Android games is not exactly an astute thing to do. Why cheat in a sport which is meant to be fun, right? And, besides, you’re competing with your friends, not fiends.

Frankly speaking, yes, we do acknowledge that fact, and thereby, we think it’s important to clear the perspective from which this tutorial has been written. Per se, we’re trying to help, who are stuck at an exacting level, or who want to transfer their saved games to new device, or who want to develop games that cannot be forged using cheats.

Concisely speaking, this is an educational guide that, although, teaches you how to cheat Android games, but strongly discourages you from using these cheats in phony ways. Alternatively, you can use these tricks to emancipate yourself from the misery of being stuck at an imperious level- struggling to find a way out. Besides, understanding how these cheats work could help you in developing top-notch games that cannot be shammed. Remember, if you want to be bad, be bad for a reason. So, before attempting these tricks, make sure you have a good enough reason to support your choice.

Anyway, let’s put our utopia aside for a while, and get started with apps/tricks that allow you to cheat/hack Android games.

Pre-requisites

All the tricks mentioned below require a rooted Android device. In case you don’t know what rooting is and how it’s done, read our in-depth guide on the Android rooting process.

What cheats can’t do

Before we discuss what the cheat does, and how it works, we would like to clear some air on what these cheats don’t do- or rather- mention the games on which these cheats won’t work.

The cheats won’t work if-

• The game stores the in-game variables (ammo, health, wealth) on the server side (i.e. a developer isn’t serving you content or some data over a network).
• The game requires a continuous network connection.

In short, these cheats cannot manipulate the data on the server side. It can only tamper the offline data stored by the game. That means that cheating on Android is getting exponentially more difficult, since many developers are starting to store a lot of data in the Cloud to help increase overall performance of a game.

Settings to change

In addition to already having root access, you might need to change a handful of settings within your Android device as well. Before you get started, grab your Android phone and head into the Settings app.

You’ll want to head into your Developer or Development Options, and then enable USB Debugging. This allows you access to your Android’s entire file system by way of a USB cord.

You also might want to make sure that ADB is installed on your computer. When it’s installed, you can type adb shell in your terminal, and then su to gain super user access. From there, you should be able to access the deep intricacies of your game data.

How to Hack Android Games?

GameCIH2- The Ultimate Cheat Engine

We kick-off with the numero uno cheat engine for Android- GameCIH2. It’s an app for rooted devices that runs in background and allows you to edit the in-game variables that reside in the temporary memory. In other words, the app allows you to edit the values of in-game attributes like wealth, ammo, health, etc.  The app searches various memory locations for variables like ‘money’ through a trial-and-error method.  GameCIH2 works for almost any game on the Android marketplace, and is one of the easiest ways to run low-level edits on game data.

Games that can be hacked using GameCIH2: Drag Racing, Temple Run, Racing Moto, Lane Splitter, Defender II, Assaulter, Myth Defense, Castle of Shadows, Toy Village, Can Knockdown, Subway Surfers, Fruit Ninja, Dream Heights, and many more.

GameCIH2 is activated by a hotkey that needs to be pressed while playing the game. Pressing the hotkey while playing the game would open GameCIH2. Input the number of coins, money, health or ammo you wish to gain. Minimize GameCIH2, and continue with the game. The cheat should work, and you would gain the requested coins, ammo or health level. To know more about the cheat engine, follow this thread on XDA Developers. The app is fairly easy to use, and as it works with most Android games, it’s, undoubtedly, the ultimate cheat engine for Android.

Download GameCIH2

Game Guardian

There’s another app that you can try, in case the game you were unable to breakthrough using GameCIH2. The app isn’t as good as GameCIH2, as it doesn’t allow you to search for variables manually. So, in case the game has some weird name for coins, you cannot use Game Guardian. However, you can search for custom labels in various memory locations, and edit their values. The app also allows you to lock-in multiple addresses at one time, which, apparently, means you can apply multiple cheats at once. The steps for applying a cheat while playing a game are similar to GameCIH2.

Try this if GameCIH2 didn’t work for you. The following thread should answer all the questions you might have while using Game Guardian.

Download Game Guardian

If both the aforementioned methods don’t work, look for saved games

In case, you’re not able to cheat the game using GameCIH2 or Game Guardian, the best way out is to look for saved games. There are lots of websites on the internet that host saved/completed games.  There are also patches that you can apply in order to gain unlimited ammo, power or health.

Just type the following string in Google: <”Game Name”> + <saved games>. Once you’ve downloaded the saved game, you just need to copy the content to /data/app (in case you haven’t moved the app to SD card).  In case you find it tough to find saved games, check out the last section of this article.

How do these cheats work?

In case you’re interested how these cheats work, here’s the dig. The cheat engine tries to access the memory location held by the game that stores the important variables. Once the cheat engine finds the memory address, it locks that particular memory location, and prevents the game from altering the value of the label. The tricky part of the cheat is to pinpoint the memory location that corresponds to the looked up attribute. Once the memory location is found, the cheat engine just has to edit the values, and lock the location for rewrite. The only way to prevent cheat engines from editing your in-app variables is to store the data on the server side.

How to transfer games across devices?

Sometimes, you’re not looking for any serious hacks/cheats, but merely want to transfer your saved game data from one device to another. Won’t it be amazing if you could play a game on your smartphone, and continue the game on your tablet from the very point you left it? Well, you can do that with manifold tools available mentioned below:

Data Sync: The most convenient app for backing up game data, and transferring them to other devices. Data Sync allows you to share app data between Android devices. Data Sync works over a Wi-Fi network, but it can be integrated with cloud services like Dropbox and Box as well. It also supports syncing data across devices through Bluetooth and NFC. This is an amazing app in case you want to sync the game data between various devices, and start the game on your tablet, right from where you left off on your smartphone.

GameOn: Game On is a network of players across the world that upload the saved files, which in turn can be used by other players to progress through levels, and gain XP. The Game On network currently hosts 60 games. Looking up for a saved progress and installing it on your smartphone is easy. It’s an awesome way to get back into track, in case you have lost all your game progress due to data wipe.

Save Share: The SaveShare application for Android works just like Data Sync app. In case the Data Sync app doesn’t work on your smartphone or you find it incompetent, you can give this one a try!

Google Drive: This one might surprise you, but Google Drive is an excellent way to transfer games to other devices. There are actually a couple of options for doing this. First, when you first setup your Android smartphone, Google asks you if you want to backup data to Google Drive. If you accept, you can easily setup your new Android device by choosing the option to restore from your old backup on your previous phone.

You can also upload whole Android APKs to Google Drive. If you don’t mind navigating through a file system, you can find your game’s APK, copy the data by right-clicking in the file explorer, and then paste it into Google Drive. You can then extract that APK onto your new phone, and then tap on the APK to install.

Tip: While using the games, avoid setting ostentatious high-scores on the game leader-board, as most people would take the hint that you have cheated to get the score. The secret of success, undeniably, lies in hiding your sources. So, make sure you cover your tracks and do not aim for a pompous score.

It’s also worth noting that variables in games can only hold so much data, so if you set statistics way too high, you could very well overflow the game data, probably requiring you to delete and re-install. And you’re definitely losing your game data there!

Also, please note that some cheats are irreversible. For example, if you try any of the cheats to get a high-score in game in order to be on the top of the leaderboard, please remember that there’s no way to revert it. Games like Subway Surfers tie the user’s statistics with their Facebook account. So, you won’t be able to undo the damage in case something goes wrong.

Verdict

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to cheat on Android games. There are actually both methods for cheating with a device that you’ve already rooted, as well as those that haven’t been rooted. By following our guide above, you’ll learn how you can modify specific variables to give yourself more things like additional money, health, and other statistics in games.

Unfortunately, it is getting more and more difficult to cheat in games, especially as Cloud infrastructure solutions are getting cheaper, and making games perform a whole lot better on mobile.

What are your favorite cheats in Android games? Let us know in the comments section below.