"Definitely the greatest puzzle game of all time"

I first got Lemmings on a black-and-white computer over ten years ago, and I'm still obsessed with the game. And, judging by the enormous effort some of my fellow contributors have put into writing up their level solutions, I'm not the only one. But then, that's not surprising, because this game is, beyond any doubt, brilliant.

The premise is tantalisingly simple. You have to save a horde of lemmings from death, and guide them to the designated exit, on each of over 100 levels. The problem is, you have limited resources with which to do this, so you have to work out how to use the tools you have.

The game starts with forty-four levels designed to get you thinking about how to solve Lemmings puzzles. On most of these preliminary levels you have a large number, at least twenty, of every skill, so running out of skills isn't a problem. From these levels you find out a lot about what the skills are good for and what sorts of obstacles the lemmings will have to face. But, more than anything else, these levels are very fun, especially that moment at the end when you let them all go, holding down Shift to increase the flow of time, and watch them rush into the exit.

After that, the difficulty level steadily increases for the remainder of the game. Many levels are ''copies'' of earlier ones, so that you have to get past the same level but with a different allocation of skills, or maybe this time with the requirement to save all the lemmings, which is quite tough, because you can't fall back on the standard method of keeping most of them back with two blockers while just one goes on ahead.

A recurring feature of the later levels is that you have only some of the skills available, and only in very limited quantities, so that you need to do a lot of thinking to see how you can make your quota of lemmings to be saved. There is, as with all good puzzle games, an enormous sense of pleasure when you've been looking at something skew-eyed for a long time, and then suddenly you turn your mind slightly, and there it is staring you in the face.

In addition, the frustration element is decidedly reduced by the fact that the game is split into four categories, in each of which you can start from Level 1 without having solved the previous category, but you need to find level passwords to progress within a category. That means that, unless you cheat and look up the passwords on the Internet (and, let's face it, if you'd do that then why are you playing a puzzle game at all?), if a particular level is driving you mad, you can set it aside and make more progress on one of the other categories instead.

Finally, the interface is wonderful. Unlike Lemmings on many other machines, you can switch from one skill to another while the game is paused, so the most intricate split-second timing is easily possible, although you will get increasingly frustrated if you keep messing it up! Of course, this in itself is one of the game's many joys, as is the satisfaction of pulling off some ridiculously complex multitasking that will leave your audience gasping, especially if they've been trying the same level for hours without success.

Here's how I would rate this game:

Puzzle element 8/10. The puzzles are wonderful, but there's still a lot more that could have been done with the materials, as the existence of ''Oh No! More Lemmings'' proves. (More detailed comparison of the two games will be found in my review of ONML.)
Gameplay 10/10. You know that moment when you've just paused, and you have to assign a skill to the lemming to stop him dying and then pause again IMMEDIATELY or else someone else will die halfway across the screen? Believe me, there's nothing equivalent on any other game in terms of sheer adrenaline-pumping.
Music 9/10. Some real toe-tapping tunes, with plenty of variety. Only problem is, each level has its own individual tune that never changes, so if you're stuck on one level and have to play it over and over again...
Sound 10/10. They're so cute!
Graphics 10/10. Ditto. Excellent backgrounds, obstacles, and traps as well.
Replayability 8/10. There are some levels, those in which the puzzle element is everything and it looks impossible until you see the solution, that you won't want to go back to; but the rest of them can be played endlessly.
Overall 10/10. I know this isn't the mathematical average of the six ratings above, but some things are more important than others in assessing a game's overall quality, and there can be no doubt that Lemmings deserves this rating.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/29/03, Updated 03/29/03