Lemmings are known for their tendency to hurl themselves headfirst off of cliffs (though the reality is they're not actually that dumb). Thankfully, the Lemmings lemmings are slightly more capable than their furry real-life counterparts. They will run willy-nilly to their doom, but with a little help from you they can take on specific tasks to assist the pack in a successful migration from entrance to exit.In the original Lemmings, each green-haired trooper can take on one of eight different skills: Climber, Floater, Bomber, Blocker, Bridge Builder, Basher, Miner, or Digger. Additionally, with the exception of a few skills, lemmings can be reassigned to perform a new task once they've fulfilled their usefulness. But there's a limited number of available skills per level. You wouldn't want it to be too easy, now would you?
The first Lemmings featured 120 levels divided into four categories, ranging from pleasant to brain-melting: Fun, Tricky, Taxing, and Mayhem. These levels have endured for over 15 years, which is certainly a testament to their design. Still, many Lemmings ports have mixed it up with new content. But are new levels enough to make a Wii Lemmings title worth playing? Probably not. Thankfully, the series has more than that to draw upon.
Lemmings 2: The Tribes retained the same basic gameplay of the original, but added tons of new skills that were often only available in specific levels. That brings us to the first important component of a Lemmings Wiimake -- the right balance between new skills and old, simplicity and complexity. Lemmings for the Wii should follow a similar design philosophy to the Xbox Live Arcade Worms title -- take the best components of its predecessors without making the game overly complicated. Fifty skills as seen in Lemmings 2 may be too many; 8 may be too few. By taking the most inventive and useful skills from Tribes, such as Flight, the gameplay
can remain fun and retain the depth of Lemmings 2. Streamlining: ain't it grand?Of course, the types of skills included will dictate how each level is designed. Lemmings games have never hurt for levels, thankfully, but rehashing all the old stages for the umpteenth time isn't very appealing. Lemmings for the Wii deserves two separate campaigns: one of hand-picked classic stages that work with the chosen skills of Lemmings Wii, and one featuring all-new levels built from the ground up to offer a completely fresh experience.
But why stop there? The Lemmings title released for the PSP in 2006 features a level-editor, which I consider a necessity for a game like Lemmings in this day and age. The ability to build and share custom levels with friends online would increase the game's replayability immensely, and simply make it more fun for those of us with a creative itch. Designing diabolical stages to befuddle your friends (or, better yet, conquering their similarly menacing levels) would be just as satisfying as tackling the hardest challenges Lemmings has to offer.
