Top 15 hardest Lemmings levels in the Original Lemmings game

[bsmith]

I'm not sure which I would put as my top 10, but I can at least recall levels which gave me notable trouble back in the day, 13 of them:

Tricky 19 Postcard from Lemmingland - I don't remember how long it took me to solve this level but I think I found the hard solution without the miner first.

Tricky 26 I Have a Cunning Plan - Before knowing about the blocker release trick it always was a pain to assign a mass of builders

Taxing 4 Lend a Helping Hand - I backrouted this for years before ever pulling off the intended solution

Taxing 11 The Ascending Pillar Scenario - The big challenge was the crowd containment and release, at least the tricky stuff was mostly at the beginning of the level.

Taxing 12 Livin' on the Edge - No framestepping meant a lot to tries to get this one right.

Taxing 22 Come on Over to My Place - In NeoLemmix I can simply assign a digger above the steel and create a holding pit without any trouble; but the steel placement is DOS meant that the digger would only make six swings before hitting the steel mask 1 pixel short of being deep enough.

Taxing 23 King of the Castle - My attemps in DOS were always a building mess and usually ran out of builders if I managed to mot lose too many lemmings.

Taxing 26 Triple Trouble - DOS gave 12 builders, but the lack of fine control still kept this level very hard.

Mayhem 3 It's Hero Time - This took me a long time to figure out where each skill was supposed to go.  And then the solution I first figured out did not work on all versions of lemmings due to things like when the timer starts and how much time elapses for the first lemming to appear.

Mayhem 5 Down, along, up. In that order - Blockers turning a builder was a new idea, plus the difficulty of judging where to place the builders and juggling the lemmings needed to make the stairs all together made this worthy of Mayhem.

Mayhem 20 No Added Colours or Lemmings - A true puzzle! I don't think I ever came close to a solution without looking to someone else for help.

Mayhem 27 Just a Minute (Part Two) - I totally understand why there were a part 1 and a part 2.  I figured out how to use the spot in the terrain in part 1.  With that little change part 2 was a whole different level.

Mayhem 29 Save Me - I had never solved this in a native DOS version.  I think Lemmini was the first time I actually succeeded.

[mobius]

Tricky 19 Postcard from Lemmingland - I don't remember how long it took me to solve this level but I think I found the hard solution without the miner first.

never knew about this solution! If you'd ask me to solve it without the miner it'd would probably take me a really long time!!!

for those curious:

Spoiler

this is a really cool solution!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSefWTq2VMw

[Flopsy]

I'm thinking of making this video soon, I might even make it a Top 15 video because there are so many good mentions on this topic.

Just bumping this up to see if anyone else has any input in this topic before I finalise the list.

Remember to assume you're playing these levels on the original game without Neo Lemmix features when answering

[nin10doadict]

One level that I recall being rather obnoxious that hasn't been mentioned yet is "Steel mines of Kessel." Yeah, you get blockers to use to help position everything, but the skillset and save requirement are still quite tight and you can't contain the crowd until the end because you need to use bombers to get through stuff.

[Nessy]

As promised from the chat, here is my two cents on the topic

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1) The Great Lemming Caper: This level has many different solutions, but none of them are easy to spot at first. Figuring out how to cross the terrain with two builders while delaying the lemming that isn't building is not an easy task. However, the terrain is so well made that even an experienced Lemmings player can find even more crazy solutions to this level!

2) No Added Colours Of Lemmings: There's a reason why this level is held in such high-regard by everyone. Not only is it brutally tough for a beginner to figure out how to release the blocker, but it's also tough to figure out how to save the miner at the end. To be fair, the game never told you that a lemming that turns into a blocker was automatically doomed... so it's pretty cool how someone can still logically figure out the solution. A Mayhem puzzle indeed.

3) Save Me: Although a little builder heavy and not so heavy on puzzle, figuring out how to control the crowd with a limited skill set so that you don't lose too lemmings still makes this level worthy of late Mayhem in my personal opinion. I don't even remember if I was able to beat this level when I was little.

4) Just A Minute: Getting to the exit is the easy part, but figuring out how to get everyone to that exit on time is the challenge! By biggest problem when I played this level for the first time was how some lemmings would turn around towards the end of a basher tunnel I would create, and that guarantees a lost because time would run out soon after. For a beginner the tricks that we might use to accomplish that today didn't come as easy.

5) It's Hero Time!: A wonderful 1-of-everything puzzle where you better optimize your solution, or there will be no time to be a hero!

6) Postcard From Lemmingland: Almost everybody has said that this level was their first major roadblock. There's a reason for that. This level is part of the group of Fun remakes that take away your 20-of-everything and throw you onto a terrain with less skills, and where to use them isn't obvious.

7) Triple Trouble: An x-of-everything puzzle that's actually pretty tough. You don't have enough builders to do much, so you need to use other skills. Because of that it ends up being more of a puzzle instead of a do-it-anyway-you-want level.

8) The Steel Mines Of Kessel: Navigating these steel mines with only your wits and a lot of bombers is not a challenge for the weak.

9) Compression Method I: It's a level that used the compressed Lemmings solution before it was cool. Figuring that out for the first time is not easy for beginners who are unaware that something like that could work.

10) Upsidedown World: A tough puzzle where the limited destructive skills makes tackling the many obstacles in this level a challenge on its own.



Honorable Mentions:

Heaven Can Wait! (We Hope): Nothing drove more fear into my childhood self than a level without blockers, and this level was the first one where it became a major problem.

The Boiler Room: Figuring out how to get past the flamethrower trap blocking the exit was the major puzzle in this level, which can throw a lot of beginners (myself included) off.

[Flopsy]

The video is finally up

You can watch it here

Top 15 Hardest Lemmings levels from the Original game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T5DmwqIBjw

Hope you all enjoy and thanks a lot to everyone who contributed to this!

[lemfan101]

This is great! I wish there was a similar video for Amiga.