The Ultra Code Reviews

Not actually a codebreaking game, and not being able to skip the "briefings" was a PITA. Especially since I ended up restarting twice because I didn't have enough bulbs for the next codes or intel to buy them, not realizing I would always start with the minimum amount. It would have been nice to have that game mechanic communicated in the tutorial levels.

The game seems a pretty nice little puzzle although fairly easy. And it runs on Linux! It could use some UI work though. I couldn't find a button to reply the test that failed, it kind of makes you build everything and never watch the tests. I accidentally skipped a puzzle halfway through because I wanted to quit the game for a bit, that's not what I thought the exit button will do. Buying operation after each completed puzzle is kind of pointless, why would I spend points now instead of waiting and buying it when I have all of them?

This game is [b]by no means challenging[/b] to anyone who knows themself to understand finite state machines. I found myself having to properly debug my solution (on the more difficult branch the game offers) only once. This does not mean the game is of poor quality. It's still thoroughly enjoyable and would probably serve as a great educational tool to introduce people to the subject practically. In fact, I think it's highly probable that that's what the developers were trying to achieve, and at that they have certainly succeeded. The game is rather short, but its length is far from unreasonable for the price. If it isn't obvious, the Enigma cipher and Bletchley park are merely a theme. A very well-executed theme, make no mistake, but the gameplay - aside from the letters and films about the role the Bletchley codebreakers served in the war - is in no way pertinent. The voice acting is very good (though not perfect) and the music excellently complements the theme. Having read other reviews prior to purchase, I was pleasantly surprised by this game. It seems capable people were simply disappointed and frustrated when faced with no challenge. Disappointment is understandable, but it ultimately isn't the developers' problem that they aren't the probable target demographic; frustration is unjustified. This frustration seems to have led to some reviewers discounting this game as a highly limited finite state machine simulator, even arguing that using a free simulator would be equivalent if not superior to playing this game. To think this is to completely ignore how this kind of gamification encourages learning; wrapping up the true goal, completing a series of exercises, in a more exciting one which provides a narrative, even if the player is fully aware of this, will motivate them to learn more than if they were simply presented with the exercises to be completed. Owing to the reviews I read, I started this game intent on completing it in under two hours such that it could be refunded. Now that I've completed it, I'm perfectly happy to hold on to this game. If I ever need to help someone better understand finite state machines, all I'll have to do is let them play through this. The value in that is leagues higher than the value of the money I paid for this game.

It's a nice and niche game about deterministic finite automata (DFA) and brings me back lots of memories from the course of computation theory in my college days. Some of the levels are just like my homework assignments. Recommended. Especially if you already had the background knowledge of DFA, you can finish the game with a swift and satisfying pace.

Well voice acted. Seemingly simple but challenging coding mechanics and easy functioning UI. Overall a good game for a casual coding experience.

I will preface this review with the following statement: The Ultra Code has problems, it is a deeply flawed game. That being said, The Ultra Code has decent voice acting, an interesting premise, and some satisfying visual feedback. Unfortunately, the game is confused about what it wants to be, and confuses the casual audience in its presentation of historical events. On the first count, the game seems to be unsure as to whether it should be a programming/electromechanical puzzle game or whether it should be a strategy game where the player makes meaningful decisions to win a war. The Ultra Code struggles to meet the standard set by other games in the programming/electromechanical puzzle genre; there is no real chance to learn and optimize your work, there are no metrics about your solution, and in fact you can't save, edit, or even view your work after you complete a puzzle. From a purely mechanical perspective the puzzles never really change, no mechanics change over the 20 level run (38 if you count the easy level alternatives). While falling flat as a puzzle game The Ultra Code's strategy elements also underwhelm. Supposedly you are gathering information to win a war, so you spend that information on various military operations which contribute to a score counter that determines the outcome of the war. The operation mechanic has the potential to reward the player and act as a driving gameplay force. Sadly the developers chose not to capitalize on this potential. Instead the strategy elements act as both a score sink and an obstacle to the player, as a player could easily waste their precious intel on the wrong operations, but no matter what operations a player chooses, the only real result is the player seeing one of two slide-shows at the end of the game. This mechanic baffles the mind with how shallow it is, contributing nothing other than a meta-puzzle whose only challenge lies in the fact that during the first playthrough the player is unaware of all the pieces. Thus as a game of strategy this game fails, as a game of puzzles this game also fails. Despite The Ultra Code being set in Bletchley Park's Hut 8, where Alan Turing and the other code breakers cracked enigma codes, this game has nothing at all to do with cryptography. Instead the puzzles are based on constructing Deterministic Finite Automata, which is a rather dry selection from your average Computer Science degree program. There is a plain disconnect here, and no matter how you frame it, the pairing of actual game mechanics with the very real historical setting, muddies the water and will undoubtably confuse your average player about cryptography and the nature of Turing et al.'s work. Beyond the confusion of and caused by this game, there are many baffling design choices. As previously stated, there is no solution saving, no editing, no selecting a desired puzzle in the campaign. There is also no way to skip tutorials, skip cutscenes, view sample inputs, etc. Worst of all, during gameplay, there is a button that is labeled EXIT, one might assume that this would take you back to the main menu: instead, this button gives up on the current level and forfeits any potential intel earned. Yes the game tells you that this is going to happen, however when the rest of the game is purely mouse driven there is no reason for the button to return to the main menu to be ESC on your keyboard. At no other point will you touch the keyboard during this game. In only a moment's absentmindedness, one can easily accidentally lose a level, mess up an entire campaign then have to play through the entire tutorial, watch all the unskippable cutscenes, then play up to 20 levels to get back to where you were. This is bad design. On a side node, on Mac OS, I had to disable the Steam Overlay because the game would open it every 3 seconds, which I find to be unacceptable. You may then be asking yourself, "Why did this guy get every achievement and write a complete guide (at time of writing the only community guide) on how to beat every puzzle and max out the operations score if he dislikes the game so much?" I will answer your question with another question, "Who else was going to?" This game has been on the market of 7 months, and had no guides, and I felt that someone had to make this resource for others. So I took the time to finish this game, to reload levels time and time again so that I could screenshot solutions and even find the optimal choice selection to win the game and get all of its achievements. During this process I did not have fun. I did it more out of a sense of duty to the genre. Once I post this review I do not think I will look at this game again. I would not recommend it, as I feel that this was a serious let down compared to what it could have been.

I'm 100% on board with games like this, and the game's narrative provided a somewhat rich, albeit truncated, history of the Bletchley Park code breakers... However, The game mechanics had no relation to Enigma ciphers whatsoever, and provided such a trivial challenge to fans of coding/design games... I was able to easily complete all paths of the game and collect all achievements in a single evening. Most disappointing.

CAUTION: This game is only a really simple Deterministic Finite Automata simulator, and it has nothing to do with the actual Enigma machines or any code breaking, which I was led to believe by the description. On top of that, we get unskippable history lessons, which are completely irrelevant to the tasks that we solve. Solving tasks gives you "intel" points, which can be spent on progressing various "operations". There's a gotcha with that: you can't win all operations even by solving all the hard tasks and never spending intel on buying bulbs. At some point, you just need to start banking intel for the Overlord operation and skip other operations, otherwise Nazis will win the war. The puzzles are mostly OK, but most of them is quite easy once you get a feel of how DFA's work. The graphics are ugly and really dated (early 2000's?), but you can see that on the screenshots. There's a lot of missing functionality (debugging, auto-connecting missing links, tagging the bulbs with some meaningful labels), but the worst UX problem is that you can't exit the game once you start solving a puzzle. Probably the best part of the game is the "Freeplay" mode, where you get 34 tasks of increasing difficulty without the WWII bullshit, but the non-trivial ones start around level 14. Only recommended to Computer Science students that can't wrap their heads around DFA's, but there are probably free DFA simulators on the Internet anyway.

Too litle of a game to justify any cost. I finished this game in less than 1,5 hours and didn't fail a single time. I like the idea which is why I bought the game, but at this point it's not value for money. It needs more challenging puzzles and a longer campaign.

Cool little puzzle/logic game. You pretty much take an input stream of 0's and 1's and direct them around to meet certain criteria for each level. Voice acting is good, puzzles are a bit on the easy side but some of the later ones (if you choose the hard ones) can take a little time to work out. The UI is mostly ok, but can get a little crowded when you have 10 nodes all connecting and cross connecting to each other. My main complaints would be that the game is somewhat short (although not too bad given the price), and that you have to play through the game again and intentionally lose in order to unlock all the achievements D: If you like easy/medium puzzle logic games with some historical flavor, this is worth $6.