463rd played so far
Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1991
Developer: DMA Design
Publisher: Psygnosis
Lemmings… DMA Design’s biggest success story until they created Grand Theft Auto, one of the biggest gaming franchises – the biggest western and non-Nintendo one based on numbers sold. But yes, before that (and before the wonderfully weird Uniracers) they created one of the most addictive puzzlers. Lemmings is actually still on Wikipedia’s list, at 20 million sold – still pretty decent.
Our Thoughts
We both knew this game already, so there were no real surprises. It was still a lot of fun to get back to the game (even if the lemmings were a lot smaller than I remember).
The basic idea of Lemmings – get the cute green and blue creatures to safety through a gate – is pretty simple. There are several ways to change your Lemmings’ jobs that get you closer. And plenty of sad, sad deaths.
The puzzles are pretty clever, slowly increasing in difficulty but so far with still pretty simple solutions when it comes down to it. A couple have different solutions, but mostly it comes down to finding out the specific solutions you should have gotten. The main goal is to get as many lemmings to the exit as possible, with a minimum per level – which is usually more than easy to do when you find the solution, with getting as close as possible to 100% being more important. Overall, it’s still as good a game to play.
Final Thoughts
Lemmings is still as good a game as ever: a strong puzzler with a slightly light setup but mostly one that’s simply addictive.
Oddly enough, the game doesn’t seem to have received an ios/Android port yet. Possibly something that will follow – the game seems suitable for it, both in the interface you use and the bitesized level setup.