Launch Arguments

For some more advanced debugging, the game allows specifying one or more launch options (or commandline arguments) when running. These are similar to cheats, except that they have to be specified before the game runs, and usually alter some type of core component of the game's behavior.

If you're playing Tiny Life on Steam, you can specify launch arguments in the Properties panel. If you're using the modding template, the build script starts you out with a set of pre-set launch options that make debugging your mods quicker and easier.

The following is a list of the most important launch arguments.

• --game-dir, followed by an absolute or relative directory path, allows specifying the location where the game's save files, logs etc. should be stored and loaded from.
• --ansi causes ansi colors to be used for the log, which makes log files less readable, but printing the content of log files to the console more readable.
• --verbose or -v causes the game to output verbose logging information to the log files.
• --skip-splash causes the game's splash screen logos to be skipped for faster startup when testing mods.
• --debug-saves causes a JSON representation of save data to be output to a save's directory when saving the game. Note that data is never loaded back into the game from this file, so editing it has no effect.
• --trace-load causes additional logging to occur when the game loads, printing out load times of individual game components. This only has an effect if --verbose or -v is also specified.
• --reflective-bind-to-type causes pre-0.48 reflective type binding to be used. This may be necessary to debug loading or saving issues with the new, non-reflective type resolving system.
• --cheats or -c, followed by a space-separated list of cheats, causes those cheats to be executed after the game has started. This works best for cheats that toggle a property, like whether non-buyable items are shown.
• --save or --load, followed by the name of an existing save file, causes the game to load into that save file immediately upon startup.
• --lot or --build, followed by the name of a lot, causes the game to load into that lot immediately upon startup. This only has an effect if --save or --load is also specified.
• --hide-all-pronouns-april-fools to enable the pronoun removal joke feature from the 2026 April Fools post. This only has an effect on English text.