PC Gamer Annual - UK (2022)

WHITE WILDERNESS Four of the absolute worst Lemming’s levels

T

he medieval historian
St Bede – aka The
Venerable Bede,
which really ought to
be a band name by
now – once compared life to a
sparrow’s flight through a
banqueting hall on a winter night: a
moment of light and warmth,
bookended by darkness. I
sometimes like to think of DMA
Design’s Lemmings as a modern
reworking of this existential fable,
with a couple of major differences.
Firstly, it’s about stupid rodents
rather than birds, and secondly, it
unfolds in a kind of Brighton Pier
version of hell, all novelty crystals
and gold pillars set to unholy
chiptune renditions of songs like
London Bridge is Falling Down.

Unlike Bede’s sparrow, the lemmings
need a bit of direction. They drop
from a magic window and trundle

protective streak. But once I’d begun,

I couldn’t let go. Who else, after all,

was going to guide these hapless

vermin back to their happily-ever-

after? Lemmings was the game that

taught me to empathise with

make-believe entities, and I glimpse

its mop-haired spectre in every

management sim I play today.

The game isn’t that difficult to

begin with, but mistakes are easily

made. Perhaps you’ve forgotten to set

one lemming as a blocker, in order to

box in the horde while you send out a

lone builder to bridge a gap. Perhaps

you’ve forgotten that there are only

so many of each skill to go around:

you can’t just make every last

lemming a floater as they toddle off a

cliff. Either way, any oversight

transforms the level into a

slaughterhouse line, with freshly

dropped lemmings dutifully

repeating the errors of their siblings,

death cries blending into a single,

garbled scream. I’m aware there are

worse ways to be introduced to the

concept of dying, but try telling that

to little infant Edwin, bawling his

eyes out at the altar of a Macintosh

Performa. Better yet, tell little infant

Edwin that you can pick skills while

the game is paused. Somehow I

didn’t work that out until 1999.

The other terrible thing that

Lemmings teaches you is that certain

deaths are necessary. Many levels

only require you to save a certain

percentage, and some lemmings are

difficult to retrieve once they’ve

performed their allotted tasks.

Blockers, especially, are the most

tragic of lemmings, unable to resume

walking once deployed unless you

send a digger to undermine them.

The game’s cruellest touch is that it

requires you to kill any lemming that

can’t be saved – individually or,

when time is short, care of a big old

nuke button. Condemned lemmings

don’t go quietly into that good night.

They shriek and clutch their skulls

until they burst. DMA Design, of

course, would go onto create Grand

Theft Auto – a much bloodier game,

but for my money, it’s actually

nowhere near as harrowing.

FALLING IN LOVE

LEMMINGS still haunts my nightmares almost three

decades later. By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

LEMMINGS

brainlessly left or right unless

otherwise ordered. Your goal is to get

them through this souvenir-stand

underworld against the clock, by

assigning skills such as digger or

climber. On the other side of both the

entrance and exit portals lies not

wintry oblivion, but a heavenly vista

of green slopes and blue skies.

If the moral of Bede’s fable is to

savour every conscious moment, the

moral of Lemmings seems to be that

life is a nasty interlude full of spikes

and lava pools, to be navigated as

quickly as possible.

RUSH MODE

I was seven when I first played

Lemmings, and it properly did a

number on me. I was immediately

panic-stricken at the thought of

taking responsibility for creatures

who are their own worst enemies –

creatures who seemingly exist only

to traumatise anybody with a

1

THE STEEL MINES

O F K E S S E L

Dig a path using the

exploding lemmings but

don’t kill more than 90%,

and make sure you blow

up any blockers that

you’ve left behind.

2

HEAVEN CAN

WAIT

You don’t have any

blockers, so you’ll need to

trap your lemmings in a pit

while creating the route.

And do it all in just under

two minutes.

3

JUST A MINUTE

(PART TWO)

Sixty seconds of frantic

wrangling with diggers,

bashers, and climbers.

You need to hold back the

crowd but you also can’t

afford to dawdle.

4

SAVE ME!

You have to land a

lemming on a ledge, then

build a staircase and

transform that lemming

into a blocker, before the

others walk off the edge

to their deaths.

1

2

3

4

PC GAMING LEGENDS

YOUR GOAL IS TO GET THEM

THROUGH THIS SOUVENIR-STAND

UNDERWORLD AGAINST THE CLOCK,

BY ASSIGNING SKILLS