"The Sims 4," Electronic Arts' hugely popular game, is classified as a "life simulation" -- and just as in real life, players must tackle the challenges of work, school, money and family. And sometimes, they may find that cutting some corners can make their virtual reality that much more entertaining.

Thankfully, the "Sims" makers have included a number of cheats -- which range from the helpful to the funny to the downright morbid. To take advantage of these magic commands, players must open the "cheat console" -- a text box -- by holding down the "Shift," "Ctrl" and "C" keys at the same time.

Once that's done, many of your heart's desires are just a few letters away. Type in "kaching," for example, and 1,000 Simoleons -- or units of "Sim" currency -- are added to your account. And if you have bigger projects, there's "motherlode," which will make you a whopping 50,000 Simoleons richer.

But life is not just about money, and you may find that what's really important to you -- and your "Sims" -- are the skills that let them advance their careers and impress their friends at a dinner party. To improve your little friend's abilities, however, you must first activate what is known as "testing mode."

It's not much of a challenge, as our colleagues at Sims Globe point out: Just type in "testingCheats true" as though it were a regular command, and voilà -- you have expanded your options. Just remember that you will have to repeat this step every time you interrupt the game.

So you have always wanted to be a famous writer? Then "stats.set_skill_level Major_Writing 10" will do the trick. Prefer to entertain your neighbors with your comedic skills? With "stats.set_skill_level Major_Comedy 10," you will be telling world-class jokes in no time.

French cuisine will be child's play thanks to "stats.set_skill_level Major_GourmetCooking 10," and even your video-gaming stats can improve within a video game: Use "stats.set_skill_level Major_VideoGaming 10." Just remember to enter all those commands without quotation marks or final commas and periods.