What it was
A trap door opens and out they come, green hair and blue robes, walking in a line. A lemming walks one way until something stops it, turns round at walls and strolls straight off edges. It will drown, burn or fall to its death without a word of complaint. Your job is to get enough of them to the exit before the clock runs out.
You do it by handing out jobs. There are eight: Climbers, Floaters, Bombers, Blockers, Builders, Bashers, Miners and Diggers. A Blocker stands still and turns the crowd back. A Builder lays a staircase of twelve steps. A Bomber blows a hole in the scenery and itself with it. Each level gives you only so many of each, and you can pause to look but only hand out jobs in real time. When it all goes wrong, one button turns every lemming left into a bomb.
Where it sits in history
DMA Design made Lemmings for the Amiga in 1991, and Psygnosis published it. It began as a doodle: Mike Dailly animated tiny figures in an 8 by 8 pixel box in Deluxe Paint, and Russell Kay saw a game in it and gave the creatures their name. The team built the hard levels first, then went back to make easy ones, because Dailly believed a proper learning curve was where most games fell down.
It became one of the most widely ported games ever, and the Super NES had it within a year. Sunsoft and Chat Noir made this version, and Sunsoft released it in Japan on 18 December 1991, in North America in March 1992 and in PAL regions that August. Total! ranked it 81st in its 1995 top 100 Super NES games, and Complex still put it 70th among the best Super NES games in 2018.
How it plays today
It holds up beautifully. The rules fit on a napkin, and the puzzles that come out of them are tricky in a way that never feels cheap: when you fail, you can see exactly which lemming should have done what, and where. And the little walkers have heaps of character for something so small.
It is slow, and by the late levels you need precise timing on one tiny figure in a moving crowd while the clock runs down. Picking out the right lemming takes practice. Give it the patience and it pays you back.
Compared with
- The Lost Vikings: Three Vikings with three jobs instead of a crowd; a Blizzard developer later said Warcraft grew partly from mixing it with Lemmings.
- Lemmings 2: The Tribes: The 1993 sequel, also on the Super NES.
- Populous: More little people seen from above, where you shape the land instead of handing out jobs.
Why it matters
Lemmings may be the only game where the way out of a lost level is a button that blows up everyone you were trying to save. It is a dark joke and an honest one. Some levels can't be rescued once you've made the wrong call, and the game would rather you own it and start again than sit and watch the clock run down.
Jesper Juul calls it the paradox of failure: we dodge failing everywhere else in life, then go looking for it in games, because failing makes us rethink and get better. Lemmings makes that loop gentle. Your mistake is laid out on the screen, a Blocker in the wrong spot, a staircase too short, and you know what to try next. The designers wanted exactly that. When test results came back from Psygnosis by fax covered in crossed-out times and scribbles, Dailly said that was exactly what they had been striving for. Being stuck on a good puzzle is not a punishment. It is the point.
Read: One must imagine Mario happy →
- Juul, J. (2013). The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. MIT Press.
What you're levelling up
You have been training these without noticing. Here is how to do it on purpose, and where it pays off away from the couch. All the skills games teach →
Problem solving
In the game. Eight jobs, a few of each, and a level that looks impossible. Bashers, Miners and Diggers can't break steel, so the obvious route is often a dead end.
Do it on purpose. Before you assign anything, pause and say the whole plan out loud. Then play it and note exactly where it broke.
Off the couch. Most work problems are a Lemmings level: limited budget, limited people, one exit. Plan before you start digging and you dig less.
Planning ahead
In the game. Each level hands you a set number of each job. Spend your Builders early and you'll reach the last gap with none left.
Do it on purpose. At the start, count what you've got and decide where every Builder goes before you let the first lemming out.
Off the couch. Plan the date. Not to the minute, but book the table and know a second spot if it's packed. A plan you're happy to change on the night is good company.
Timing and rhythm
In the game. You can pause to look, but jobs only go out in real time. A Builder started a step late means a lemming off the edge.
Do it on purpose. Replay one level and aim to drop each job on the exact spot first time. Count how many you save each run.
Off the couch. Cooking for mates: pasta, sauce and garlic bread all landing at once. Same skill, the right move at the right moment, not a second after.
Verdict · 8/10
A perfect idea made with care: eight jobs, a crowd with no sense and a ticking clock. Slow by modern standards, and better for it.
