Robot Unlock is an open-ended puzzle game with 75+ levels. Design your own solutions and optimize them for speed, instructions or space and compare with other players. Create your own levels, challenge other players and solve community made ones.

After years of trying you finally manage to dial into other-space. You find that the dweller of other-space has challenging questions about computability and is asking for your help.

• 75+ levels
• Solve puzzles in constrained spaces using a handful of instructions
• Solve open-ended problems and design your own solutions
• Optimize your solutions for speed, instructions or space
• Use multithreading - carefully synchronize your execution threads to halve the execution time
• Set breakpoints - step backward, or even step forward!
• Compare with other players - see how your solutions rank with fun histograms
• Create your own levels, share them and solve community made levels

Frequenly Asked Questions

• Do I need to know programming in order to enjoy the game?

  If you are unfamiliar with programming, you will most likely experience Robot Unlock as a puzzle game. While playing, you will incidentally learn the core of programming as you complete levels (without even realizing it!).

  If you are already familiar with programming, then don't worry - the game still challenges you in new ways as this is not your typical sort of programming. The virtual machine that Robot Unlock implements has extremely little memory, a very reduced instruction set and programs are laid out on a grid - it'll be fun!

• Puzzles or Problems?

  Puzzles in Robot Unlock usually have a single solution.
  Puzzles are there to test the limit of what can be done under extreme constraints. Puzzles may force you to use instructions in ways you wouldn't necessarily do if the constraints would not be in place. Puzzles are quite hard.

  Problems have many possible solutions and this is great as you gain design freedom and opportunities for optimization.
  The first part in solving a problem is to reach a solution that passes all the tests.
  The second part - which can take quite a bit of time - is to optimize that solution for cycles, plates used or area.

• Can I make my own level and challenge others?

  Yes, of course!
  Solve enough levels in the "Start" level pack to unlock the editor.
  In the editor you can edit the playfield, set the memory size, tests, instruction set and directive.
  Once you have solved your own level you can export it for others to solve/enjoy.

• Where does Robot Unlock take its inspirations from?

  brainf**k - I love the extremely simple memory instructions

  befunge - first time I saw code being laid in a 2D space; I understood micro-optimizations in befunge can be very interesting as layouting is a more important and complex problem to solve than in typical languages.

  return true to win - I find myself coming back to this once or twice a year. I love the fact that it's not typical code golf in that there are restrictions which force me to use parts of JS I would normally not even be aware of.
  After I solve a challenge I can see that others have solved it using fewer chars and that motivates me to try to shave off some characters. I end up spending more time optimizing solutions than finding a solution in the first place and I wanted to replicate that in Robot Unlock.

• What is the awesome song I hear in the trailer and can I listen to more of it?

  I'm glad you ask - it's called "Home Dimension" by Joey Freeze and it's available at https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1030073 under the CC BY 3.0 license.

• Have these questions really been frequently asked or did you make them up as a convenient way to say more about the game?

  Yes