Codemancer has variables and conditionals, and uses them for various things. Some of the game is very tactical, so conditionals are used to deal with enemies who have semi-random behaviour. There are also levels that take place "in the dark" (with a limited field of view).
Yes, "code your way to the target" games have become somewhat of a genre. I think the story is one source of differentiation, as is the programming interface -- Codemancer has no numbers greater than 5 (arithmetic is mod 6), to keep the game from getting math-heavy. All the functions are symbolic, so there's no reading required.
In Codemancer user-defined functions are "pages" in your spell book. Players can call other pages, and even the page they're on (this is much later in the game). You can also Cast a page onto an enemy who has been weakened. We've seen that kids are pretty comfortable with the idiom of "Pages."