The Making of Lemmings (article)

[Clam]

Just found this neat article on the history of the Lemmings games. It's a timely nostalgia kick, given the upcoming anniversary (which of course you all know about, right? )

http://readonlymemory.vg/the-making-of-lemmings/

Largely covers the same ground as The Lemmings Story, but with a more recent, outside-looking-in perspective (it's not datestamped but the text suggests it was written in 2014). I found it well worth the read, even though there's not much new content-wise – it complements TLS nicely. And the artwork is amazing

[Simon]

'I would have loved to take the characters and do something different with them,' says Dailly.

Yeah, Sony gobbled up the rights and didn't do much with it.

Adding more stuff, as with the sequel, doesn't make it better.

There is not a single element of the game that could be removed without changing the whole thing.
[...] it was already perfect the first time around.

Variable release rate, concocted percentages, and, depending on design goals, time limits. None of these have come to the writer's mind, who argued that L1 is all about small characters interacting with landscape.

We enjoy a luxury: L1 comes short mostly in usability, which is expected for a 1991 game, 25 years behind modern theory. I see far fewer issues with pure game design.

It's interesting how triggered traps are so central to the design. Besides interacting with terrain, the game is about seeing many different little animations.

-- Simon

[NaOH]

Awwe, that was a cute article! Thanks for the read, Clam.

It's interesting how triggered traps are so central to the design. Besides interacting with terrain, the game is about seeing many different little animations.

-- Simon

Heehee. My first priority when seeing a new trap is always to launch a lem into it and see what happens.

[ccexplore]

There is not a single element of the game that could be removed without changing the whole thing.
[...] it was already perfect the first time around.

Variable release rate, concocted percentages, and, depending on design goals, time limits. None of these have come to the writer's mind, who argued that L1 is all about small characters interacting with landscape.

I read that statement as an obvious poetic exaggeration to make a point.  Even if one ignores the usual things Simon like to rant on, just the levels themselves people have had many likes and dislikes, as evident in the level review threads.  A more interesting point may be something like Simon's suggestion of culling floaters as mentioned previously on IRC.  That would be a somewhat bigger and thus more interesting removal of game element.

We enjoy a luxury: L1 comes short mostly in usability, which is expected for a 1991 game, 25 years behind modern theory.

It's a little like judging the usability of PC OS's at the time (eg. DOS and other command-line-based interfaces) compare to modern OS's like Windows or iOS.  It would be astounding if you can find no shortcomings compared to modern standards.  Certainly at the time it hadn't hindered the apparent meteoric rise in sales.

It's interesting how triggered traps are so central to the design.

I feel like it's more related to the history of how the concept came about.  Basically the animations was the spark of inspiration, the rest sort of came later.  When you started off with all these funny animations already made, and they inspired the rest of the game in the first place, it only makes sense to try to use them as much as you can.

And from my limited and admittedly amateurish experience with creating levels, slapping in yet another hazard is often an effective way to remove a backroute.   I imagine it's somewhat like what they quoted Mike Dailly saying, that the traps were there to "guide" the players so that levels don't become too "dreadfully dull".

It is also probably good for marketing to show off the lemmings getting killed and maimed in hilarious ways.

[607]

That was great!
Thanks for sharing, really interesting!