[NeoLemmix] Xmas Lemmings 2021 [Difficulty: Easy-Very Hard]

[Guigui]

Thank you for clarifying that for me kaywhyn, now the level still looks hard, but not impossible !

[Guigui]

And now the Bonus rank has fallen, and with the whole Xmas Lemmings 2021 pack by Armani himself.
I must say I am proud, and happy to have cleared this pack.

As for the other ranks, levels in the Bonus rank are cleverly designed and mainly harder than the others as intended. Giving some thoughts now :

Spoiler

Bonus 1 : Hardest level of the pack for me, what a tough one to start the rank. I must say I cheated a little for this one, because while trying to solve the previous issue I had on Bonus 6, I saw a screenshot of a video by Swerdis which shows the position of the first blocker in this bonus 1. I did not think at all to set this blocker here, and it lead me to the solution.
It is another case of "assign the skill that will free the blocker before the blocker is even set", always hard to see for me.
Also my solution does not use the two upper pickups. For a long time I tried to catch them, but ended one lemming short of requirement, and this was because getting the two upper pickups used 1 climber and 1 builder, made me gain 1 climber and 1 builder, but loose the lemming ! So yeah, do not get those pickups and you're done. Intended ?

Bonus 2 : Better love sliders to play this one ! I could make a structure at the beginning to sort the swimmers and sliders directly, and another structure at the end to make them all go to their respective exit.
In the end I think my solution is quite clean, and I have one stacker and a couple of shimmier left. Maybe this was not intended ?

Bonus 3 : I could clear it with almost extensive study of all the possibilities here. Just save destructive at all cost.

Bonus 4 : Once you realize you only need 1 swimmer to cover the whole water needs, the level becomes easier ! Typical Armani stuff with the new skills : cloner a constructive lem, make a stoner at the most improbable place, have fun with gliders.

Bonus 5 : Easiest of the Bonus rank, may have been in the previous ones. At first I could not solve it because I was a bit frustrated by the others before and was searching for complicated stuff. This is a very regular level with a nice touch : assign the climber at the correct time.

Bonus 6 : Weirdly enough, this was a quick clear for me after the "hatch above the water??" issue was resolved by kaywhyn some posts earlier. The use of the cloner and builder is quite clear, getting a glider to shimmy all the way up is a bit tricky but nothing undoable if you've played some Armani before. Weircly enough, the hardest part for me was to time the fencer correctly so that the crowd would stay compact and go to the exit quickly enough.
But then saving the last glider was the thing : when you're out of everything, and playing the last level of a pack, what should you do ? I could find this fast enough because I had nothing else to do, and also because I recently played a kaywhyn's level in contest 33 that uses about the same trick : neutralize a lem for some frames with a oh-no animation.

Oh well, thanks again to Armani for this very well designed pack. If not already done enough, I must stress again that the guy is certainly one of the best level designer out here  I'll be sure to try Halloween 2023 some time in the future, and why not bigger packs when I feel the time has come ?

Now that I'm quite happy, and exhausted, to have solved this, please recomend a short and easy-medium pack ? My brain needs rest !

[Armani]

@Guigui

Hey, thanks for playing this pack!   This pack and my very first pack consist of some of my earliest creations, so I'm not very proud of the quality of those levels. Still, I'm happy to hear that you had a great time playing them anyway! I also had fun looking through my old levels and your replays!

Your solutions are all intended solutions or slight variations. Since you mentioned that you've seen a screenshot of Swerdis's playthrough of this pack, I confirmed that Swerdis's solutions are all intended, so you can check them if you feel like some of your solutions seem fishy or unintended.(Or there's my own replay pack in the main topic! )

It looks like the ray_snow graphic set got some physics updates but wasn't included in the NL style library. So I had to download the style manually to check your solutions.(My replay pack I mentioned above should only work with the ray_snow graphic you can download via the style manager.)

I could update some levels using that style to fix the issue, but then people using the style manager to download the style would run into issues instead. It'd just be the other way around. So I'll leave the levels as they are unless the updated style gets included in the NL style library.

Here are some comments on individual replays!

Spoiler

Avant-Garde 2 – While having a conversation with Namida on Discord in the past, I realized that Christmas comes during summer in the Southern Hemisphere, so there's no snow, which I'd never thought about before. (Namida is from New Zealand. ) I found that funny, so I made a level called "Meanwhile in Namidaland" without any snow pieces, using only green terrain pieces!

Avant-Garde 9 – Slightly different from my own solution, but your solution has the core idea: extending the fencer with several well-placed stackers.

Avant-Garde 10 – I'm pretty sure everybody's first skill assignment on their first attempt at this level is filling the gap with a stoner!

Avant-Garde 12 – I generally tried to add pick-up skills only if they serve as a puzzle element in the level usually by making them expensive to reach or by providing multiple ways to get them so you have to make a choice. Sometimes getting them is bait from the start, like in this level.

Bonus 1 – Yeah, intended! The pick-up skills are there for symmetry, you don't actually need to collect them all to solve the level!

Bonus 2 – As long as you make separate paths for both groups, your solution is perfectly fine!