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Duncan
New Zealand
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Thank you so much. Next please
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Lemmings is a classic puzzle game from the early ‘90s, it is based loosely on the supposed suicidal migratory instincts of the real world rodent, the lemming. I’ve done a little basic research and it turns out that real lemmings get a raw deal and this is mostly a misconception – but in the end it doesn’t matter, the game is still a true classic. Note that my experience and screenshots are all from the DOS version (currently emulated in DOSBox) so there may be some differences in the fine details of the game and interface that readers might beg to differ with. The most major difference that I am aware of is that a two player mode was supported on some other platforms’ versions of Lemmings. I’ve missed out completely on this mode of play so I can’t comment except to say that I would like to imagine that it was as good as the rest of the game.
The Basics
Lemmings has a total of 120 levels, divided into 4 difficulty levels: Easy, Tricky, Taxing and Mayhem. Regardless of the level or difficulty the aim of the game is to get a minimum proportion of your lemmings from the start point (or, in a few levels, start points) ‘home’ – a little house located somewhere on the level.
A typical screenshot
Image of a full level
Without any user intervention a lemming will just keep on walking in one direction until they a) hit something and turn around; b) fall - if they fall too far they will die; or c) get killed by other means – lemmings might fall into water/acid or walk into one of the traps that can be found on some levels all of which will kill an unsuspected level one of a variety of ways: mashed, crushed, incinerated… the list goes on.
Jobs for Lemmings
The fairly simplistic approach these lemmings have to life is not sufficient to get them home on their own so the player has to intervene to help these apparently mindless rodents (or at least enough of them to advance to the next level) get where they need to. To do this the player can assign tasks to individual lemmings to control lemmings, make paths through or over obstacles and increase the survivability of individual lemmings. There are eight different tasks lemmings can be given, each with its own uses. Going from left to right across the game's tool bar:
Climber A lemming that has been assigned as a climber can climb up vertical surfaces. Unlike most of the other tasks, a Climber retains this ability for as long as it on the level.
Floater The complement of climbing, lemmings with this ability opens a little umbrella/parachute upon falling so the lemming will not splatter itself on the surface it lands on if it falls too far. Like Climber, this ability is retained as long as the lemming is on the level. A lemming that has been assigned both Floater and Climber tasks gets the special title “Athlete”.
Blower Not the job I would wish for if I were a lemming, on being assigned this task, the numeral ‘5’ appears above the lemmings head and starts counting down. After the count reaches 1, the lemming stands still, hands over ears and explodes. This leaves a fairly impressive crater on most terrain found in the game.
Blocker The first tool in lemming control, a lemming assigned the job of blocker stands stock still, arms held out horizontally. A blocker becomes a barrier to other lemmings and a lot levels can be completed by trapping the majority of your lemmings between two blockers or a blocker and another suitable obstacle while using one or a few lemmings to create a path the others can later follow. For those wondering what the point to blowing up lemmings was, this is where it comes in – use blockers to control your lemmings and blow them up when a path is ready for the lemmings to follow. If necessary this same combination can be used for controlled demolition of thin walls or floors.
Builder The only constructive job you can assign to a lemming. A builder will build a short flight of stairs until it times out or bumps it head. They will pause and shrug their shoulders upon running out of bricks allowing the user to click on them again to make them keep building.
Basher Bashers cut a horizontal path through terrain until they run out of stuff to bash or hit something they can’t damage.
Miner Miners are much the same as bashers, using a pickaxe to dig a stepped tunnel diagonally downwards.
Diggers Diggers dig vertically downwards much like bashers and miners.
With just these 8 tools, the player faces a great many different situations. This minimalist simplicity is a key part to the game’s basic elegance.
Levels
Each level has a number of factors that add to its overall difficulty. First and most obvious is the map itself – the obstacles and terrain the lemmings will need to traverse to get from their starting point to home. But by itself this is fairly irrelevant, the game also imposes several other parameters. Firstly, a time limit, no problem early on but it can add a lot of pressure as the difficulty increases. Secondly limits on how many of each lemming task can be used in the course of the level, this ranges from 0 through 99 and can be especially important in making good use of builders or finding sub-optimal ways of doing things that you would otherwise do a different way but can’t. Thirdly, the rate lemmings enter the level is set to a minimum (from 01 to 99). This value is displayed at the bottom left of the screen and can be increased to the maximum of 99 but never decreased below the level’s minimum. For harder levels when you need to manage emerging lemmings immediately to pass the level this becomes a very real concern and increases the game’s dexterity component. Fourth and finally, each level has a total number of lemmings and a set proportion the player has to get home to advance to the next level. This punishes lazy play as difficulty increases.
The maps of the levels themselves vary greatly in layout and composition. From a purely cosmetic stand point there are a number of visual themes the levels are each based on: sand, ice, dirt, hell and so on.
This doesn’t do much other than give the game some flavour and stand in the way of monotony. A great amount of many of the levels is completely unnecessary but adds to the somewhat frivolous flavour of the game; from little things:
To completely superfluous monstrosities:
Terrain can either be destructible, indestructible or, in (perhaps only) one special case, a bit of both. Generally all terrain I destructible – you can use lemmings to dig/bash/mine paths through it and exploding lemmings will create a crater. Conversely, indestructible steel cannot be damaged by any of these means. Some levels also have blocks of terrain covered in arrows all of which point in one direction.
In this case you cannot act against the arrows but if, for example, you assigned a lemming to bash a tunnel in the direction of the arrows it would work as for ordinary terrain. On the whole there is little variation in the material composition of a level, what is far more important is the configuration.
While the game nominally has 120 single player levels, there are some apparent repeats – levels in different difficulty categories using the same map with some of the peripheral parameters made more difficult. The first example of this: level 13 Fun reappears as level 2 tricky but with twice as many lemmings to get home.
To their credit, the game’s designers did not do this very much, repetition of a level is definitely the exception not the rule.
Interface
Lemmings can be played with three primary modes of input: keyboard, mouse or joystick. I will stick to the first few as I have never played using a joystick I imagine it is similar to using a mouse. When using the mouse as the primary input, a key board can still be used in tandem, if you know what buttons to press. Using the mouse is easy and not on necessarily complicated. Navigate around the map either by holding the cursor at edge of screen or clicking on the mini map display, click on the buttons in the panel at the lower left to change speed, pause, nuke the level or change the selected lemming task. Click on a lemming to assign it a task. This actually leads to quite a lot of mouse movement, which is where the keyboard comes in. The 12 buttons in the control panel correspond to the 12 ‘F*’ keys(or whatever they are properly called). Using a flexible combination of mouse and keyboard makes the game very simple to control and not overly tedious. Some combination of letter keys allow you to move the cursor too but I put that in the “too hard to get used to” tray. I guess when lemmings was released a mouse wasn’t a given.
Audio and Visual
I tried to find an appropriate video for this section, but in vain. I couldn't find and don't have the software to make a video of the version of the game I am talking about. I'll just have to make do.
The numerous screen shots should tell that lemmings is a very visually simple game. A lemming is just a handful of pixels in 3 colours and the levels are much in the same vein. It may be simple, it may not be the sparkly graphics of the latest and greatest games but I think that good taste goes a long way and, visually, lemmings has plenty of this. The nature of the game means that the player has to be able to see what is going on with ease and not have to look at something overly repetitive or something that is an eyesore. So I will quite seriously play Lemmings 20 years after its release and not think it needs a graphics makeover. It’s aged very well and is fine the way it is. Don’t disturb the simplicity.
Sound wise, my opinion is a bit different. The lemmings don’t say anything bar squeaking (understandably) before exploding and upon getting home. There are very few other sounds related to gameplay and those mostly tell you yet another lemming has suffered some description of nasty death. Later Lemmings games led me to the opinion that this is enough and it should be left alone. The only potential issue is the game’s music – 20 odd MIDI sequences which are modifications/combinations of (somewhat)well known classical pieces or traditional songs the word “lemming” can easily be swapped into –’Ten Green Lemmings’, ‘How much is that lemming in the window’ you get the idea. Do I like it? Yes, but only in a highly nostalgic sense. Would I listen to it out side of a game of lemmings? No. This style of music really hasn’t stood the test of time. Fortunately as with a lot of games, you can easily play your own music in the background and turn lemmings’ off.
Cruel and Idiotic Fun
For those of you who like to sit back and watch the world burn, lemmings cater for you; at least on a small scale. Sometimes the little pixels falling everywhere when a lemming explodes or falls can be entertaining on its own. I can’t really put words to it but it’s might be related to enjoying making people in explode into chunks in Quake rather than playing a first person shooter from the current century with the latest and greatest graphics (but no gibing).
For those just looking for such strange entertainment (please don’t tell me this is just me) Lemmings has the “nuke” button at the extreme right of the tool bar. Nuking a level causes all lemmings on the level to count down and explode in a long chain reaction from the first to last lemming to enter the level. A long line of lemmings can make a very impressive display of pixel fireworks.
As near as I know the intended purpose of this was so players can get something out a level that they clearly can’t finish in their current situation. The game even says ‘I hope you nuked that level’ if you end a level having saved 0% of your lemmings. To be honest, a simple “give up” button would suffice but it is typical of Lemmings to have a far more petty yet entertaining approach to this.
Final Thoughts
I’ve seen multiple other puzzle games in the general vein of Lemmings, but never anything that has caught my eye as better in any important respect. Where a lot of these games fall down is in over complicated tools to solve the puzzle or ridiculously contrived levels – moving wheels, blocks swinging on pivots and the like; elaborate and completely unnecessary. Some of the later Lemmings games fell down in one or both of these areas and, if you are familiar with some of these, have aspects that are ‘good’ examples of what not to do. It is simple to encapsulate why I like Lemmings so much as a puzzle game: elegance through simplicity. There is just enough and not too much of everything that makes a quality puzzle game. I strongly believe that as the defining game of its type, Lemmings deserves, and is worth, playing now, 20 years after its first release. Not just for nostalgia’s sake, but because it still rates as a top quality game.
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James Lowry
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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Part of the appeal/humor of blowing up/nuking lemmings is the champagne cork-like 'pop' they make as they explode.
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I loved the local two-player mode. That was the best of the game. Our playing mode:
Each player created a tunnel and stair system that would contain the Lemmings and let them walk in circles. Then each player sent single Lemmings to the other player and tries to destroy their base and kill all their Lemmings. What fun! 
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Matt Logan
United Kingdom
Lancashire
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A true classic. The music from the Amiga version cannot be beaten.
Brilliant stuff.
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Yah, the Amiga version is the greatest, with the Beast of A Level and so forth.
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M@tthijs
Netherlands
NOT
Holland
Earn tons of geekgold:...
...go to VGG and add videogames to the database
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Great review. Instantly wanted to play Lemmings again. An guess what? I can. (Even at the office!)
http://www.funnygames.nl/spel/lemmings_spel.html
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Posted Mon Jul 25, 2011 8:26 am
