Cheat Mode On

Cheat Mode On is a long-form campus-and-online-game novel by the web novelist Niu Bi, following his earlier work Peerless. Set where university life and a virtual game world intersect, it follows a group of young people brought together by a single game, whose antics spill across dorm rooms, classrooms, internet cafés and tournament arenas, producing a steady stream of laughs and mishaps. The protagonist is impossibly gifted in-game, sweeping all before him as if he had switched on a cheat code, while in real life he still has to contend with coursework, friendship, a budding romance and uncertainty about the future. The author keeps to his signature cheeky, irreverent style: dense with gags and wildly inventive, it keeps readers laughing again and again, yet beneath the horseplay it captures the loyalty these young people pledge to one another, the stubbornness with which they train side by side for a single match, and that youthful determination to win just once. Reviewers often compare it to Wu Zui's classic Rogue Master, arguing that its appeal lies not in grudge matches and heavy drama but in its vivid rendering of friendship and first stirrings on a green campus, and of the nerves and joy that come when small hopes are granted bit by bit. As the story unfolds, the dream of competition rises to the surface, and the hero's cheat-powered game life grows ever more passionate.