Is this like that game that I've seen in the shops? That one with the coloured plastic pegs?
Yes and no - that game (Mastermind) and Codex are both based on the same game: Bulls and Cows. The rules are pretty much the same, but the big difference is that Codex is more of a community game. Not played those games? That's OK - have a look at the tutorial, and you'll pick it up in no time.
Community game?
Yeah - whilst you can play on your own, part of the fun is sending challenges to other players (and receiving challenges back). Each time you complete (or fail!) a challenge, we'll update your score and let you know where you are on the weekly leaderboard.
Weekly leaderboard? What, with prizes?
Oh yes, but it's nothing too fancy. At the moment the stuff on offer is things like Amazon vouchers and other minor prizes. Unfortunately, the Codex budget it pretty minimal, so we can't stretch to much more than that right now.
Wait a minute - you said the rules were "pretty much the same". What's different in Codex?
Nothing major, don't worry - we just use an extra colour to make things a little more tricky. It just means that you have seven colours to choose from instead of six.
So who makes this stuff then, and what's all this "req.co.uk" stuff about?
That'll be Breadmower - an IT guy who spends his evenings making social networking sites and games like this. Codex is an offshoot of req.co.uk - his blogging system. Codex uses req.co.uk user accounts, so registering on one site means that you can use the features on the other site too.
Cool. Make any money out of this?
No - but at the moment Codex doesn't cost much to run, so there's no real problem. If the game does take off then there might need to be a few text based adverts or something to cover the costs.
So it's free?
Yep - and will stay that way for the forseeable future, so don't panic. We won't be asking for your credit card details :-)
I've found something that doesn't look finished, or doesn't work!
That's not really a question, but that's OK. Even though the site's been running for a few months now, it's only just becoming (properly) open to the public. We've done quite a bit of testing, but there's bound to be stuff that we've missed, and even then the site's still not finished - there's still work to be done. If you have found something that's not right, then post a comment over on the Codex blog, and we'll see what we can do.
Why's it called Codex?
To avoid any unpleasant legal issues, we decided that it'd be a good idea to have a different name from any other versions of the game. There was a request for name suggestions in the newsletter one week, and Codex was chosen as the best one. OK, so technically a codex is a book, but it does contain the word "code", and "x"s are always cool. If that doesn't do it for you, then let's pretend that it stands for COde Determination by EXperimentation - that sounds pretty snazzy, doesn't it?