Lemmings

Lemmings is a puzzle video game originally developed by DMA Design and first published by Psygnosis for the Amiga, Atari ST and PC in 1991. The game was programmed by Mike Dailly and David Jones, and was inspired by a simple animation that Dailly created while experimenting with Deluxe Paint.

The objective of the game is to guide a group of anthropomorphic creatures called Lemmings through a number of obstacles to a designated exit. To save the required number of lemmings to win, one must determine how to assign a limited number of eight different skills to specific lemmings that allow the selected lemming to alter the landscape, to affect the behaviour of other lemmings, or to clear obstacles to create a safe passage for the rest of the lemmings.

Lemmings was one of the best-received video games of the early 1990s. It was the second highest rated game in the history of Amstrad Action. Lemmings is also one of the most widely ported video games, and is estimated to have sold over 15 million copies between its various ports.

This version, and its twisted spawn the Game Boy port, is the worst Lemmings port I?ve seen so far. You can?t change release rate; you can?t change tasks when the game is paused and you can?t move the cursor while you change tasks; there is no fast forward option; the levels have a maximum of 14 Lemmings instead of the usual 100, but having even this many on your screen at once will blind you due to flickering; the game does not display a Lemming?s current task, so you just have to randomly click on the crowd and hope you assign a task to the right one (you almost never do); there are 25 levels per difficulty instead of 30, and lots of levels are missing, the rest are recycled with tighter conditions; most levels were severely compressed on the X axis, which, together with mechanical changes, makes some levels impossible to beat without losses and makes some levels require different solutions; you can?t build near doors; the playfield is divided into 8-pixel tiles, and you can only assign tasks when a Lemming is transitioning between tiles, which practically makes space even more cramped compared to the original; Builders ignore Blockers, and tasking Lemmings to Build exactly when they turn away from a wall takes extreme precision, moreover, thin walls don?t allow building all the way up to them; Builders also make 16-pixel long ladders instead of the usual 12; explosions are tiny and rectangular, affecting only thin walls and thin floors, destroying a small bit of terrain to the left, right and bottom of a Lemming; Digger now takes some time before a hole appears under it, but when it does, it?s instantly 8 pixels deep, so this task is less useful for stalling, whereas Miner now Mines a steeper tunnel, which appears almost instantaneously, making this task more useful for stalling; Bashers destroy terrain by 8-pixel squares too; no task can be done while a Lemming is going down a very steep piece of terrain; ladders are now shorter and steeper, and can?t be built on top of other ladders, you can only either continue building a ladder from its end or start building a ladder in the opposite direction from the middle of it; the game can only play either music or sounds.

I tried to save Lemmings whenever possible, but there probably are a few levels that could?ve been solved better. After beating the game, I show sounds, death animations and different messages you get depending on how many Lemmings you saved.