Level of the Year: 2015 (Voting Round 3 Winner: IchoTolot's "Heroes of Lemkind")

[Nepster]

Congratulations to IchoTolot, GigaLem and Geoffster for the first three places.

However I too am wondering why IchoTolot's level "Heroes of Lemkind" was for example preferred to "Face of Evil" or Geoffster's level "Parking Garage"? What do you find so ingenious/brilliant/... in this level when compared to the other levels among the last 7?
I am not interested in learning how everyone voted, but rather in learning what makes this level so highly valued in order to optimize the level I create.

[namida]

From #neolemmix:

<namida42> i can see why. it's completely fair, and doesn't rely too much on precisely-timed multitasking, yet is still extremely challenging. it also has a very nice appearance, and the music is very catch too
<namida42> it also doesn't involve too much guesswork, as compared to, eg. Nightmare 29
<namida42> you can sort of get an idea of what goes where, but working out exactly how it's done is where the challenge lies
<namida42> and yes, the chain trick was genius

For me - when it got to the point in Round 3 where I had to choose two levels to vote for, I had a hard time picking between Parking Garage, It's Not Time For Flying Toast and Heroes Of Lemkind. In the end, the only deciding factor I could think of to set these levels apart from each other came down to which ones were the most challenging to me; as I couldn't actually decide which ones I thought were the best - all three are amazing levels.

[Flopsy]

To be fair I liked both levels in the final. No Time for Flying Toast had the best visual design while being a challenging level.

Heroes of Lemkind was just a genuinely hard level, I haven't attempted it personally, just watched others play it on youtube.
I don't remember the solution but it involves doing something strange with a hanging chain but I know when I saw it I was thinking this level is amazing.

Well done to both IchoTolot and Gigalem for being the top 2, and also well done to everyone else who had levels nominated

[geoo]

I feel the same, out of Icho's 4 levels that made it to the last round this was clearly my least favourite and I wonder what people like about this level. You have those pixel-precise builder placements on the chain which are very untypical for Icho's levels (and feel somewhat cheap to me), and once you realize that this actually works the level is straight-forward and very standard, except for one nice digger placement where digger later walks around and makes it back to the main path.

Flying Toast was a nice little puzzle and it took me a while to figure it out. The eventual solution was simpler than some things that I tried out while trying to solve the level though which left me a little disappointed. I certainly quite enjoyed the level though.

So while both of them are very decent levels, neither of them would have made it into my personal Top 3 from the last 7 levels, so in the end I also didn't vote in the final round as I didn't feel super excited about either of them.

I'm somewhat surprised Parking Garage seemed to be a slight favourite when there were 5 levels left but then didn't make it past the last three. That would have been my favourite, followed by 'Another Brick in the Wall' and 'The Face of Evil'.

[Akseli]

Congratulations for the designers of the top levels!

I nominated Heroes of Lemkind to this voteoff, because it stood out for me the most from the entire Lemmings Reunion for its immense enjoyability factor. In my case it's mostly subjective why I like this level a lot, so I can't point out accurately objective details, except maybe digger placement that geoo mentioned. This was a memorable, awesome looking level and really satisfying to solve.

Parking Garage was the clear front runner all the time, and it won its every round until there were 5 levels left. In the semifinal it got eliminated, which was a huge surprise. I would've voted for it all the way.

The crucial point in my solution for The Face of Evil felt backroutish so I didn't vote for it. No Time for Flying Toast was an amazing level, even though it resembled a bit levels I had played before, like mobius' Five for Fighting.

Oh, like always, I would've liked to see a full score breakdown of the whole voteoff.