God Mode

God mode is a developer's code, or backdoor, that facilitates testing of a particular game. As the name suggests, the player's character becomes akin to a 'god' in the game world, with the associated invulnerablility to most sources of damage.

Debug codes such as 'God mode' are typically accessed by way of a button sequence or a command on the game's console; often, the codes will reference events, places or persons particular to the game's developers, so that a player would be unlikely to stumble upon them by accident during normal game play.

Used most often to test the game's artificial intelligence and level design without having to actually survive the game's hazards, lists of debug codes such as 'God mode' have been widely available on the Internet for many years. Occasionally, developers will patch the debug codes so that they're inoperative in a given version of the game. Such patches are uncommon, however, because of time-constraints and the effort it would take to remove the debug code without causing errors in other parts of the game.

Some developers caution against the use of debug codes, warning that use of the codes can cause the game to act in an unintended manner, or render it entirely unplayable. Accordingly, most developers will not provide technical support in cases where it's obvious the player altered the game via one of these codes.