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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."
I tried to hew closely to the principles of Constructionism which were pioneered by Papert, and to make the game accessible to kids who wouldn't normally be interested in programming.
Since then, even more have cropped up: Code Combat: https://codecombat.com/ Empire of Code: http://www.checkio.org/blog/empire-code-space-strategy-game-... Code Kingdoms: http://codekingdoms.com/ Taken Charge: https://takenchargegame.com/ ComputerCraftEdu (Minecraft Mod) : http://computercraftedu.com/