My YouTube playlist of video solutions:

Kaywhyn's PimoLems V 2.3 Video Solutions (Old Formats NL)

As the link says, these are for Old Formats NL, i.e the v10 NL players. As such, since Icho is no longer maintaining that version, some backroutes that are fixed in the New Formats version might still remain in the Old Formats version.

Finally, even though they likely aren't really of interest, my complete replay collection for Old Formats NL is attached for archival purposes

My YouTube playlist of video solutions:

Kaywhyn's DoveLems V 1.4 Video Solutions (Old Formats NL)

As the link says, these are for Old Formats NL, i.e the v10 NL players. As such, since Icho is no longer maintaining that version, some backroutes that are fixed in the New Formats version might still remain in the Old Formats version.

Finally, even though they likely aren't really of interest, my complete replay collection for Old Formats NL is attached for archival purposes

For the last several months, I went through and played several games I remembered from my childhood, with some also being in more recent times.

In August, I went through the GOG (Great Old Games) Mega Incredible Machine pack that I downloaded from way back in 2019 and have installed on my machine but which I didn't play through all of each game. The bundle consists of The Even More Incredible Machine, The Incredible Machine 3, The Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions, and The Return of the Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions. The only one of these I played back when I was a child is TEMIM, though I didn't finish all of the puzzles at the time. It wasn't until after I had graduated from college when I finally played and solved all 160 puzzles.

The only other game in the series I owned when I was a kid was The Incredible Machine 2. TIM3 is essentially TIM2 but with an updated UI and for Windows rather than Dos. I wasn't able to get the speech for TIM3 working until I asked a user on one of their videos how they got the speech working. They referred me to ExoWin for that. Needless to say, it's a huge pain to get working on modern machines. IMHO, you're better off just sticking to TIM2, as IMO the TIM2 soundtrack is many times better than the remakes in TIM3.

Well, I felt it was time to play through all 4 games of the mega bundle, even TEMIM in spite of how that was the only game in the series included in the bundle that I have played in its entirety. So, for about a month I successfully completed all the puzzles of each game and hence got a diploma of Contrapology after completing Even More Contraptions Absolutely worth getting if you're into The Incredible Machine and puzzles in general. I think this pretty much explains why I'm able to solve custom Lemmings levels more easily than most.

After that, in September I played through Contraption Maker, which is pretty much a spiritual successor to The Incredible Machine. It's a game that is available for purchase on Steam. I bought this back in 2017 and played for probably about a week before I stopped playing for a long time before I finally buckled down and played through all the puzzles for real. After about a week, I completed all the official puzzles. Though controls are at times clunky, a lot of the puzzles were very satisfying to figure out and solve

In the same month, I played Age of Empires and its expansion Rise of Rome. I was one of those who only used cheat codes back then, but nowadays I don't play with them anymore and play the campaigns legit. I went through the campaigns of both games and completed them all again on the highest difficulty of "Hardest." I played them on a Win XP virtual machine, and it's quite surprising how very well they run despite the games themselves being quite old. Here, I played the vanilla version via the Gold Edition that is available for download online. The reason for this is because I really miss the old graphics and sounds I remembered growing up playing the game. For clarity, I also have the Steam AoE Definitive Edition installed on my machine alongside the Gold Edition, but the AoE Steam version just doesn't do the series justice. In particular, I don't really like the music remakes on Steam. It's such a travesty IMO!

Finally, Guigui's post saying that they played through both Portal games inspired me to play through them again as well, which I did last month. Not only did I complete the single-player again for them, I also completed all the advanced chambers of Portal again. I honestly didn't remember finishing all the advanced chambers maps, but I apparently have from several years ago as indicated by the 100% completion shown in the game.

It didn't stop there. Thanks to this Portal 2 Tutorial - How to Switch Players in Co-Op When Playing Solo, I was able to complete the entire co-op by myself Despite how it's intended to be played with another person, it's definitely possible to complete solo. There's only a few sections that have extremely tricky and difficult timing, but they are possible to do solo. I don't have any recorded videos of my playthrough of Portal 2 Co-op, but maybe sometime in the future I will

Quote from: Guigui on September 16, 2025, 10:19:22 PMI'm currently playing Portal 1 and 2 games, for maybe the 3rd time each since they came out.

The simplicity of the concept, and the tremendous puzzle it is able to create still amazes me each run I make. Plus the humour around those corridors is really good. Definitely give it a try if you love puzzle games, and do not get misdirected by the firts person view : those are real puzzle games.

Absolutely agree with the excellent voice acting of the Portal games! I think in this case this was either my 4th or 5th time playing them      

@Tomato Watcher

Congrats on the release! I'll take a look at this in the coming days/weeks. The level previews look great!

Quote from: Guigui on November 01, 2025, 01:06:07 AMCurrently stuck at Sweet 5 Just Relax.

Lack of constructive skill gets me : 4 gaps, some quite large and high and only 2 builders and 6 stoners. Also, how can this basher help me get higher ? Need to think more I guess...

Quote from: Pieuw on November 01, 2025, 07:15:34 AMStarted to play his pack yesterday. The Sweet rank gets quite challenging at some point! I'm stuck at the "Puzzle" level (I don't remember the full title). Either I don't understand how these teleport looking objects work, or they don't work properly? Probably the former. I'm quite dumb when it comes to stuff that are not in the original Lemmings.

That being said, I enjoyed the levels I managed to solve

This surprises me, as I took a look at these two levels after you gentlemen posted and I didn't think either of them are that hard However, @Guigui congrats for solving Sweet 5 after getting the hint

@Pieuw

Those are portals on Sweet 6. They work the exact same way as teleporters except they aren't RR sensitive and are bi-directional, meaning Lemmings can go in and come back out the same way they came from.

Quote from: JawaJuice on November 02, 2025, 11:30:56 AMFirstly, thank you for making this pack, The Tomato Watcher - thoroughly enjoyed playing through it! It's on the easier side, but still a nice challenge, especially on certain levels. My replays for sweet and sour ranks attached. I don't think I found any backroutes here, but I'm not the best at knowing when I've found one and when it was the author's intended solution!

Secondly, by way of introduction, I've been lurking on this forum for six years or so and thought it was time I stepped out of the shadows. I'm a long time fan of OG Lemmings, having bought it when it came out in '91 on the Atari ST (probably giving my age away a bit there!). Discovering Neolemmix and this forum was a godsend and I just want to thank all of the authors of packs on here, who've brought me many hours of entertainment (and frustration!). Keep up the good work!

@JawaJuice

Hi JawaJuice, welcome to the Forums! Nice username. Is it a reference to Jamba Juice by any chance? It reminds me of that because of how your username is similar sounding to it when said out loud

Ah, another one who has been lurking for quite some time before finally posting to the site. I too was one for a few years even after I registered to be a member back in 2017 before finally posting publicly to the Forums in 2020. So, I've now been active in this community for 5 years but has been a member for 8 years. Before that, I read posts in the background silently

Quote from: JawaJuice on November 06, 2025, 04:50:49 PMHey, Tomato Watcher! Apologies for the late response - I haven't quite got the hang of this forum yet I assumed when you had posted in a thread you would automatically be subscribed to it and therefore receive notifications. Since I hadn't got any notifications (email), I assumed no-one had replied to the thread so hadn't bothered to check the forum for a while! Guess you have to explicitly subscribe to a thread?

Correct, you'll have to click on "notify" found at either the top or bottom of the board or topic you're viewing in order to get notifications of posts/replies to topics you wish to watch. At the same time, I think you might have to go to your profile settings => Notifications and check at least one box for the two settings "When a topic I follow receives a reply, I normally want to know via..." and "When a new topic is created in a board I follow, I normally want to know via..." That should allow you to get notifications once you click on "notify" and one of alerts or email or both are checked in your notifications settings in your profile

QuoteAnyway, congrats again on your pack, it really was a lot of fun and I'm glad you enjoyed watching my replays. I should have provided you with feedback for specific levels like Guigui did - I'll try and remember to do that in future as I'm sure it's helpful to a level designer! I will say that I clocked early on that a relatively lenient save rate was going to be a theme of your pack so I took it on myself to try and save as many lemmings as possible on each level as an extra challenge, hence some of the unnecessarily fiddly, un-intuitive or timing-precise solutions. I don't think there's anything to fix on your part - it's just how I decided to approach it. I'm used to playing packs that do require such precision to complete, so I guess it's a hard habit to break As a gauge, I'm a fairly experienced solver, though not on the level of a few players on this board who make LP vids! I typically struggle with Very Hard or Extreme difficulty, so packs like yours are most welcome in my book!

I'm the same way with wanting to either save all, or if that's not possible, then save as much as possible. Thus, this often gets me into trouble with levels where you're allowed (or even required) to lose one or more Lemmings. Has happened to me quite often!

It's perfectly normal to struggle with the Very Hard or higher difficulty levels. Everyone at some point will struggle with these levels, some more than others. For example, it took me an entire year to solve all of Lemmings United. Similarly, believe it or not it took me almost 3 years to solve all of NepsterLems, all courtesy of Black Hole 1 which I was really stuck on but finally managed to figure it out after quite some time.

Along with the above, you're in for one heck of a ride when and if I ever get around to finishing my level pack Lemmings Memories and releasing it. I haven't made that many levels for it yet, but from all the feedback I've received so far, it's shaping up to be a really difficult pack, even if I don't expect it to be the next Lemmings Reunion or NepsterLems in terms of difficulty

Anyway, enjoy your stay and the many level packs that are currently available to download and play. We're glad to have you with us!        

Added text, button and popup in commit c69a09c.

@Guigui

Congrats on the release! I'll be taking a look at your level pack as soon as I go through some other ones that were released before yours. As I just completely solved all of StokeApe's STOKEAPE JUMBLE earlier today, that means in order the next packs I'll be playing are ScottyLems and Lock and Key. Once I'm done with those two, then it'll be time for your pack! When I do, I of course will link my LP For now, I must say the level previews look great, that L1 Pillar one especially looks amazing!

That's awesome that Icho was your pre-tester for the pack before release! Indeed, he's one of the main go-to people for that, myself being another that many have also asked to pre-test levels for. So, if you ever want a second opinion or looking for other possible pre-testers, I can be one

Regarding the music, I recognize a lot with them. 12/16 as a matter of fact. As a result, you'll probably hear me singing a lot in my LP!    

Hi StokeApe,

I have played and solved all of V1.1 of STOKEAPE JUMBLE. I've attached my entire replay collection for the pack

Also, link to my LP: Kaywhyn's LP of STOKEAPE JUMBLE V1.1

Enjoy!

General Feedback

STOKEAPE JUMBLE is a level pack by StokeApe. 40 levels across 4 ranks of 10 levels each, with the final rank also having a self-solving 11th level. Nearly all of the pack uses custom tilesets, most of which I haven't seen in a long time. There's a few that I don't recognize, though that's probably because they were just recently added to the NL standard library.

Save for the first several levels which took me by surprise because they're much harder than I expected, the difficulty pretty much flattens out for the rest of the pack, with the occasional odd level or two that are harder than usual. So, I can probably classify this pack's difficulty as Medium - Hard.

Aside from the breather levels which were mostly builder heavy and hence builderfests to an extent, there were also some levels that weren't really my cup of tea. Most notably, there's a few levels that require a lot of stoner/stacker staircase spamming. I generally am not a fan of levels where one needs to do a lot of rapid firing skill assignments in a really short amount of time. This is personal preference, though I'm far from being the only one in this community who dislikes such levels Also, a lot of the levels that have time limits are super tight for some reason on top of the level already being difficult as is. Why make them even more stressful by putting in a very unforgiving timer? At the same time, I have checked the intended solution which does finish with time to spare and therefore I have myself to blame for making things way more complicated than they needed to be.

For Proxima's Minesweeper set, as mentioned in my LP I need to ask him about whether it's ok for the Lemmings community to use for making levels in, as I think I remember some time ago he said that he still needs to make changes to the set itself. If there are indeed some additions he needs to make to it, then StokeApe will need to make changes to his Minesweeper level in this pack. Along with that, keep in mind that hiding stuff in the terrain is generally frowned upon by the NL community, especially as CPM (Clear Physics Mode) renders that completely pointless, since one click to activate it is all it takes to reveal the hidden trap and exit triggers. At the same time, that's how the game of Minesweeper works, though the whole point is to logically deduce where the mines are based on the revealed numbers. Even then, I don't know the rules of the game too well and therefore I still can't play Minesweeper really well

For a first level pack by StokeApe, even if there's still room for potential improvement and that I have definitely found some backroutes, this pack is quite decent quality IMO. In particular, there's some true gems in here, with my favorites being BANANA 1, BANANA 4 (I probably consider this the best level of the rank, even if my solution is somewhat harder than the intended way ), BANANA 9, BANANA 10, WATERMELON 5, WATERMELON 6, and PINEAPPLE 5. 

For @StokeApe, 3 of your replays don't work in the current V1.1 version: BANANA 3 - Azure, COCONUT 7 - Slop Realm, and WATERMELON 7 - Crystals, Of Course. Also, this is the only patch after the pack's initial release, and so I don't know what changes were made for the levels that were mentioned to be updated in between the versions. I did check and seems plenty of levels received massive changes in the layout/design. I also ran a mass replay check of my V1.1 replays on the initial pack release version and there are some that fail. That doesn't matter, since all my replays are for the current V1.1 of the pack.

Also, some of the levels have preassigned SMS Lemmings tracks, but you didn't supply the music tracks with the pack download. You might want to fix that. In my case, it works out because quite honestly I'm not a fan of the SMS tracks. This is in large part how I grew up with the Dos version of Lemmings, and hence I'm a sucker for the Dos/PC Canadian version of the Lemmings tracks That's why you hear the PC Canadian music tracks in my LP Music is personal preference of course, and players can always customize the music to their liking for NL level packs.

BANANA Rank Feedback

The first rank of the pack, with the first several levels harder than I expected but afterwards the difficulty flattens out for the rest of the rank. Some great levels as I already mentioned above!

Spoiler

BANANA 1 - Habana Bonana Excellent level to start off the pack! Wow, lots of nice red herrings here that look like they can work but don't, resulting in a level that's much harder than I gave it credit for! I especially like the falling bomber to make a hole for the others to fall into to be contained by a blocker, as well as a basher coming from the other side to release both the blocker and the crowd who then has more than enough time to build across the gap before the others arrive. Well done!

BANANA 2 - Yellego Nice to see Colorful Arty's Lego set here, one that I haven't seen in a while. Open-ended level it appears, so any solution that works should be acceptable I'm guessing.

BANANA 3 - Azure Another level that's harder than I expected but still a nice one. Finding a way to contain the crowd while letting a worker go on ahead to make the path is the hardest thing in this level.

BANANA 4 - Cactus Murder I used staircases from interrupting destructive skills midstroke here, which I honestly thought was required and hence why I consider this my favorite level of the rank! Turns out it isn't required, though interrupting midstroke is required in a few later levels of the pack.

BANANA 5 - Rebuild Wow, another really hard level, quite possibly the hardest of the rank. Then again, I completely missed the landable ledge at the start that my solution doesn't use at all. Even then, in a way I kind of like my solution a bit better, even if it's a bit hackish and somewhat inefficient in some places I was able to spare the jumper in my solution.

BANANA 6 - Frosty Treats Pretty much a breather, being a builder heavy level, with the hardest part being how to contain the crowds and then release them all later while not losing anyone.

BANANA 7 - Lab 23 Pretty much another breather, with the hardest part being how to contain the crowd while one goes on ahead to make the path for the others.

BANANA 8 - Nimbus Bimbus Same as the previous two levels above with being a breather, with again the hardest part being to  contain the crowds.

BANANA 9 - Ancient Refinement Nice level that's somewhat hard but isn't too difficult. My solution is different from the intended way, as the remaining skills I used to make a safe fall for the left entrance.

BANANA 10 - The Oven Wow, a great level to finish off the rank! That builder on top of the steel to make a wall to contain the crowd is great and same thing with the release of jumping to get on top of the staircase and then digging to free the crowd. My solution is different from the intended way, but it should still be fine as they're quite similar in pretty much every way save for a few details.   

COCONUT Rank Feedback

This rank in general overall felt easier than the previous rank, with the occasional odd level or two that are harder than usual. Still a nice rank.

Spoiler

COCONUT 1 - Pi Seems to be open-ended here, though there aren't too many options here. Checking your intended solution, one of the bombers is absolutely not necessary, as I tried it myself without it and your solution would still work and hence you would finish with a bomber leftover

COCONUT 2 - Go Home Breather builder heavy level. The tileset is nice, and I do believe this comes from SuperLemmini.

COCONUT 3 - Lem Sweeper Will talk to Proxima about his Minesweeper set, and again if he still needs to make additions then the level might need some reworking depending on the changes. Quite an easy level if one uses CPM, since it reveals the trap triggers and where the hidden traps are. However, for the extra challenge, I decided to play the level without it, as I generally don't use it in my live LPs anyway

COCONUT 4 - White Branches Another breather builder heavy level, with the hardest part being making sure not to get anyone trapped who won't be able to be rescued later on.

COCONUT 5 - Don't Fall Seems the level design has changed drastically in this version. My solution is very different from the intended way, so is probably a backroute

COCONUT 6 - [/b]Step Up[/b] Wasn't too much of a fan of this one, though that's because I generally struggle a lot with using stackers to solve levels in NL. It's different from your solution, but should still be acceptable.

COCONUT 7 - Slop Realm This one wasn't too bad despite it looking somewhat difficult. Another graphic set I haven't seen in a while.

COCONUT 8 - Slush Lemming Most definitely a backroute as I ignore the preplaced Lemming at the top completely Nice to see one of WillLem's Lemminas 2 tileset here in the pack!

COCONUT 9 - 21 Two replays are included here, as I was able to find a way to finish the level on time instead of running out of time on the same frame the final exiting Lemming counts as saved. Just needed a minor tweak to my first replay but is still overall very different from your intended solution.

COCONUT 10 - Pistachio Yum, my favorite! Sorry, another backroute here, as I avoid the pickups completely      

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WATERMELON Rank Feedback

Pretty much the same as the previous rank in terms of difficulty.

Spoiler

WATERMELON 1 - Black Gold Nice level to start off the rank, though maybe a backroute since I don't collect the pickup in the top corner?

WATERMELON 2 - Pumpkin Patch Lems Hardest level of the rank for me, but as explained I tend to struggle a lot with zombie levels. Impressive intended solution though!

WATERMELON 3 - Honey Lummy Another nice Lemminas 2 tileset by WillLem Complete breather here, with the only thing to watch out for (at least in my solution) is Lemmings slipping by the teleporter at the bottom, but that's easily remedied by making a pit so they can't go out the right side.

WATERMELON 4 - The One's That Come Before You Sorry, not a fan of this level, even when seeing your intended solution that it is indeed intended after all to quickly cancel the stacker after laying one brick. As mentioned, stoner/stacker staircases aren't my cup of tea in NL, and I'm not the only one

WATERMELON 5 - The Heavy Stuff Pretty much the best level of the rank IMO. I especially like that a basher from the left needs to cancel out each digger so that you don't use more bashers than you actually have. Well done!

WATERMELON 6 - Tasty Jams Breather, with the very nice element of needing to use the structure at the top in order to bypass the wrong facing force fields. Excellent! Also another tileset I haven't seen in a long time.

WATERMELON 7 - Crystals, Of Course Another heavy builder breather level, with the hardest part being how to contain the crowd while sending one worker ahead to do the work as usual. I'm not sure if getting to the exit from the right side is intended, though looking at the platforms below the exit it doesn't seem that would work since there's no way to turn the Lemmings around and hence they'll get into danger.

WATERMELON 8 - Dig Just! Pretty much like WillLem's Inverse Lemming version of the level, except in yours the entrance and exit are also inverted 180 degrees while in WillLem's they retain their positions in the non-inverted version. Nothing too hard here other than the thick terrain might be difficult to get through.

WATERMELON 9 - Pixel By Pixel Pretty much a breather here for me, though I finished with a lot of skills to spare

WATERMELON 10 - Missing The Cold Another level I wasn't a fan of even after checking the intended way. As explained, I've played way too many levels of this type by now that it's another one that's overdone to death for me, with needing to fill the gaps between multiple obstacles in order to have a miner go through all the builder staircases. It's a case of the solution is obvious, but is not enjoyable for me due to so much trial and error in getting multiple staircases placed correctly. To add insult to injury, the miner has a bad tendency to chip off the base of the staircase when placing the builders in the bomber holes So, sorry, wasn't a fan of a level where I've seen bulder/miner combo so many times by now with all builders needing to be placed correctly between multiple obstacles.         

PINEAPPLE Rank Feedback

The final rank of the pack, which honestly wasn't too difficult of a level save for one which I wasn't a fan of (at least the part of the level where you need to spam repetitive skill assignments) and one where I'm not sure if the very obscure trick is required in the final level. If it isn't, then I'll come back to the level sometime to see if I can solve it without it. I haven't checked your intended solution for PINEAPPLE 10 just in case it isn't required.

Spoiler

PINEAPPLE 1 - There Is No Grey Nice level to start the rank and another tileset I haven't seen in a while. The only hard part here is containing the crowd.

PINEAPPLE 2 - No Choice Nice level which seems to have been a bit inspired by a level of Dodochacalo's in the final rank of Fiat Lem! but has 1 minute time limit instead of the unusual one here.

PINEAPPLE 3 - 1 Up As you already know, I wasn't a fan of the stacker stoner staircase part of the level, but I really like the miner to make the ceiling thin enough to allow the crowd to get to the exit. In your solution, you made the end more complicated than it needs to be. All you need to do is cancel the miner midstroke with a jumper or builder

PINEAPPLE 4 - Nothing Goes To Waste Not a difficult level, though not an easy one either. The hardest part (again, in my solution) was making sure no one dies to the bear trap on the left side. My solution is also different from yours, but is likely still an acceptable one

PINEAPPLE 5 - Not To Scale Wow, excellent level! I really like sending that worker to the bottom who makes his way back up in order to disarm the traps and then release the crowd from below by bashing away the platformer. Well done!

PINEAPPLE 6 - Fool Me Twice Hard one, but another one where my solution is different from yours that saves some skills. I still consider my solution just as difficult as yours, as for example stoning that glider that's one pixel away from touching the ground is an obscure one but allows one to stop Lemmings from slipping out the wrong way.

PINEAPPLE 7 - I Think It's Seven Now Another hard level and quite possibly the hardest of the entire pack. I probably made this harder than it needs to be in some places. I'm not sure what happened the first time with not being able to collect the bomber pickups when bashing but was later successful. Probably the 1 or 2 pixels of bashing lower made all the difference there.

PINEAPPLE 8 - Bubble O's Easy level if one knows that a blocker can turn a digger. The rest is just basher/miner staircases.

PINEAPPLE 9 - Scenic Route Likely a backroute, as this was quite easy and I literally solved and figured out in 30 seconds

PINEAPPLE 10 - Ripped Off I use the obscure basher/blocker trick here which I'm not sure is absolutely required here. If it isn't required after all, then I'll come back to the level sometime to see if I can figure out how to solve the level without it. I think I know which level the title is referring to, as I remember a very similar Fire level to this one.

PINEAPPLE 11 - Thank You Self-solving level.   

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Overall, well done for a decent first level pack! Thanks for this, I enjoyed it for the most part        

Hey, Tomato Watcher! Apologies for the late response - I haven't quite got the hang of this forum yet I assumed when you had posted in a thread you would automatically be subscribed to it and therefore receive notifications. Since I hadn't got any notifications (email), I assumed no-one had replied to the thread so hadn't bothered to check the forum for a while! Guess you have to explicitly subscribe to a thread?

Anyway, congrats again on your pack, it really was a lot of fun and I'm glad you enjoyed watching my replays. I should have provided you with feedback for specific levels like Guigui did - I'll try and remember to do that in future as I'm sure it's helpful to a level designer! I will say that I clocked early on that a relatively lenient save rate was going to be a theme of your pack so I took it on myself to try and save as many lemmings as possible on each level as an extra challenge, hence some of the unnecessarily fiddly, un-intuitive or timing-precise solutions. I don't think there's anything to fix on your part - it's just how I decided to approach it. I'm used to playing packs that do require such precision to complete, so I guess it's a hard habit to break As a gauge, I'm a fairly experienced solver, though not on the level of a few players on this board who make LP vids! I typically struggle with Very Hard or Extreme difficulty, so packs like yours are most welcome in my book!

Spoiler

Out of interest, what were your intended solutions for Sour 5 and 6?

On further investigation, applying option #2 seems very simple indeed - so I've gone ahead and done that for now.

At this point in time, if I've understood the options and configured everything correctly, spam checking should now apply to registrations, as well as posts from users who have not yet made 5 approved posts. Once you've hit 5 posts, your posts should just go through without being checked (as it's probably a safe assumption - and we can change the settings if this turns out wrong - that if your first 5 posts either were approved by CleanTalk, or flagged but then approved by a moderator, you're probably not a spambot).

There has been a few cases of CleanTalk causing problems for legitimate users of the site - two users have reported their legitimate posts being outright blocked (in one case this was due to a VPN, the other one has no explanation whatsoever), and we've also had a few cases where posts were flagged for moderator approval despite having no need to be (I'm a bit less concerned about that last part - I consider that to be a tolerable side effect, it's the outright blocking that concerns me).

I raised a few potential solutions on the staff board, and am now bringing them into public discussion.

Option 1 - Keep as-is, accept it will cause problems sometimes
Self-explanatory. I really don't like this option - aside from that it's going to frustrate users who have done nothing wrong, another concern is that new users may be attempting to sign up, running into problems, and we never know because they never reach out to us, so they just give up and don't join.

Option 2 - Use CleanTalk with altered settings / customizations
The main ideas here are (a) disable the filter that stops suspected spambots from even accessing the site (even to read it), and (b) only apply the spam check to posts from new users (with the "what counts as a new user" being a to-be-discussed point). I was a bit hesitant about this due to the amount of work that would be involved, but it actually looks like the plugin has at least rudimentary features to help with this. The problem with this approach is that it still doesn't really help much with users who don't even manage to register (if they do manage to register and attempt but their posts get outright blocked, I'll at least see them in the CleanTalk admin panel - but a blocked registration attempt is literally impossible to distinguish spam attempts from legitimate ones, especially at a quick glance).

Option 3 - Mod/admin approval of all registrations and posts from new users
The idea for this one is - get rid of CleanTalk, and rely on human approval for new users. Admin approval would be needed for new registrations, and mod or admin approval would be needed for their first few posts. The biggest problem here is how to handle a case of "spambot makes account, never posts, just spams via PM" (while also being mindful of that there are several legitimate users who don't ever post publicly, but do communicate with other users via PM). Maybe this isn't a big enough concern to worry about right now - I haven't received any reports of PM spam so far.

Option 4 - Revert to old setup, deal with spam as it happens
And the last option is simply to go back to minimal anti-spam measures (just security questions etc - not much point in CAPTCHA these days, it's trivial for AI to defeat it), and accept that spam attacks will happen once in a while, and that they're annoying but not really the end of the world - users here should be savvy enough to identify and disregard them, so the issue is yeah, really just that they're annoying.

I was initially favoring option #3, but after seeing that the CleanTalk plugin already has some features that might help get a good enough setup of option #2, I'm leaning more towards that. Discussion of this matter on the Staff Board also, where other staff did respond, was leaning towards preferring option 2. As an interim measure I've already implemented option #2 part (a) (disabling the filter that blocks the site entirely for suspected spambots) and will see what difference that makes, if any.

And for any legitimate users trying to sign up who are encountering issues - please, reach out to us. You can contact us on the Lemmings Forums Discord, or on the #lix IRC channel on QuakeNet.