Apps to hack Android games on the rise

Cheating is always bad, we know, but in the case of gaming this practice has been a wily constant from the get-go, with some of the hacks more licit than others. A few years ago the big trend was Cheat Engine for Windows, a tool that injected code into running games to let you do cheats in them. The same kind of thing has made it onto Android with apps that let you modify games as you play them: GameGuardian, Game Killer, and Game Hacker are some of the most popular ones out there for these purposes.

How do these apps work?

Usually games that need an Internet connection to run so they can constantly be updating their internal data can easily detect when an app has been modified to give advantages to certain players. That’s why these apps tend to recommend that they be used on offline games. For these cases it’s better to use tools like the popular Lucky Patcher. That said, in most cases this kind of funny business goes completely against the usage norms of the software in question, though at the moment we’re not exactly analyzing the moral dilemmas surrounding cheats.

Basically, the way these apps work is by modifying the games’ info as they run rather than trying to crack the static installation files. Take GameGuardian, for example. Once installed, you run the game you want to modify, leave it running in the background, then start the app. From the list of running processes you select the game you’ve started. Now use the values search to find the parameter that interests you.

Finding what you want to change is more or less difficult depending on the game and the value to be modified. For example, imagine you want to change the amount of gold you hold, which is a number with a lot of digits. So open the search and run a variable search for Dword (a 4-byte number). If you insert a value like 40,350 you’ll probably just get a null result in return. But if you tap on it you can change the quantity and see the change reflected in the game instantly.

Things get trickier when you’re looking to modify a value that you can’t see on the screen in numeric value, like an energy bar. Hence there is an option to search for variations of a number that drops over time. In this case you’ll need to alternate back and forth between the game and GameGuardian so you can check whether you’re reducing your in-game energy with your changes. This might take a bit of trial and error to find the value you’re looking for, but once you do you can modify it as in the previous case. And no, nobody said this would be easy.

Another interesting feature in GameGuardian lies in the fact that you can modify the game’s internal clock, meaning if for example you have to wait a certain time to build a structure, you can drastically reduce your wait. To do so, tap the app’s semitransparent icon and increase or reduce the flow of time.

GameGuardian on Uptodown [APK] | Download

Game Hacker on Uptodown [APK] | Download

Game Killer on Uptodown [APK] | Download