Sad Puppy Lemmings (2017, mobile)

[Serkanhassan]

http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=308730

[grams88]

Welcome to the forum Serkanhassan.

That lemmings game looks kind of cool:)

[Serkanhassan]

https://youtu.be/WeRxQRLY-8k

[Ryemanni]

That looks so cute!

But then again, it's not an official Lemmings game by Sony.

[Serkanhassan]

It is an official Sony game.  Their logo appears when you launch the game.

[Ryemanni]

It is an official Sony game.  Their logo appears when you launch the game.

Well, I see some debate about it's legitimacy on the topic you linked. The game does seem well made (and super cute! )
Too bad it's not for android so I can't give it a go.

[ccexplore]

Yeah, as echoed by some on the linked topic, the seeming lack of any press release, the fact that there seems to be no other games published on the App Store by the same developer, makes it tricky to verify whether it truly is an official game or not, to say the least.  You would think that if Sony is affiliated they would bother to show that somewhere in their youtube video.  Unless Sony actually sold their rights to Lemmings completely over to the developer, which would be quite surprising.

Also, I can't find any cost information (granted, I don't have an Apple device so I'm only going by what the App Store shows on the web browser).  Is it a paid app or freemium?  If freemium, how are they making money (ads? in-app purchases for extra levels? etc.)  It's hard to imagine an official release without some component of this, heck, even unofficial games I'd expect to see the same.

I don't follow Sony closely so I don't really know what their mobile strategy, if any, is nowadays.  Maybe a poorly announced mobile app is not all that inconsistent with their overall mobile strategy, but somehow I can't imagine that to be the case.

And yeah, I won't be able to try it at all if it's not on Android.  Oh well.

[Ryemanni]

It seems that the app is free on itunes, so I bet there are ads and some sort of energy you have to use to play the levels (like most of the mobile games nowadays ).

[ccexplore]

Yeah, reading more carefully at that forum thread (the only one Google found so far that mentioned this particular game),

http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=4029404&postcount=2

Not your classic Lemmings. Actions are assigned to level blocks and lemmings entering the block perform the action.
Less accuracy required, I imagine for making it easier on mobile.

Lacks the charm of Lemmings of old (which remake doesn't?) and there's some sort of energy system at work but I haven't had time to fully investigate. Looks like bog standard loose a life per play, wait or pay to get more.

Worth a look if your fond Lemmings memories are resilient to this sort of meddling.

Not a fan of these kinds of wait-or-pay system (I think I'd prefer more ads over that), but I guess there are just no good options when it comes to freemium model.

Someone else on the thread suggests this may be a "soft launch" which supposedly may explain the lack of publicity.  But man, even assuming that's truly the case, this sure is real "soft" compared to how marketing was handled for all the other Lemmings games released in the past for PlayStation.   Then again, if the previous efforts didn't sell as well as they had hoped for, maybe a vastly reduced marketing budget would perhaps naturally lead to this kind of soft launch.

[Serkanhassan]

Just a heads up to say that a new update launched today, available on ios in both Malta & the Philippines.

More territories will come soon.

[Serkanhassan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOm1YGGeM-w


Currently available in the following countries:

• Australia
• Denmark
• Hong Kong
• Ireland
• Malta
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Philippines
• Singapore

[Nepster]

Given it's weird choice of countries and your previous post about this game, I would like to get a few answers:
1) What ist your affiliation with this game, if any?
2) Who produced this game?
3) Is the game free? Does it contain in-game monetazation strategies?
Note that we aren't too concerned with legal issues and possible copyright infringements, as long as it's free fan-made content. But for a possibly commercial game released on an official platform, I really would like to know a bit more.

[namida]

It appears to be free to play, but with in-app purchases of some kind (I didn't look into what they are). However, it also appears to - aside from the title "Lemmings" - not actually be using copyrighted assets, but rather, original ones that resemble the official ones. It's probably a case where if they do attract attention, they can simply rename it for the next release and they're fine.

On the flipside, a previous attempt to use the "Lemmings" name for an iOS game - which was also free with in-app purchases - did get C&D'd. However, that was nearly 10 years ago now.

[ccexplore]

It looks like Serkan/Sad Puppy's Lemmings is now also available for Android as well as iOS, and perhaps finally available worldwide instead of limited regions like a year ago.  Apparently they even announced the release today over the official (I think?) PlayStation blog.  I actually ran into this from a site that doesn't normally cover much gaming.

Amazingly, the blog post doesn't even have links to the Store app pages, but here they are from the other site that I originally found out about this:

Get for Android (Google Play)
Get for iOS (Apple)

I haven't tried it yet, but now that it's available for Android I could give it a try sometime.

(update: reading the comments on Google Play Store, everyone's complaining about the energy system.  Quote:  "So if you enjoy playing a game for five minutes then waiting hours to play again you may like it.", " I would have happily paid $5 or maybe even $10 for a full, uninhibited version of the game, but $7 for two hours of normal gameplay is insulting".  Not very encouraged by this. )

[Flopsy]

Just played this game myself, not very impressed with it to be honest.

The Lemming sprites have gone backwards from the Lemmings Touch sprites to being worse than the PSP Sprites, anyway graphics is just the tip of the iceburg.

The game relies on you selecting an area on a level which is like a grid of squares called tiles and then selecting a skill which can be used on that tile. For example, a blank tile will give you the option to use Blockers or Stairs (renamed Builders) which will automatically occur when a Lemming arrives at the tile.

I literally had to put if down after beating the first 3 levels because it's so bad, but I played enough to discover the following.

- Lemmings don't fall straight anymore, they projectile fall off an edge.
- Umbrellas (renamed Floaters) just have to be placed on a tile where the lemmings are falling and they are automatically assigned to any Lemming which falls through the tile.
- Bashers no longer exist, they are just called Diggers even when going horizontal.
- Blockers can now be turned back into regular walking Lemmings.
- You have an energy meter of 60 and you use 1 energy for each skill use so 60 skill uses before you have to recharge.

All I can say is, I recommend everyone tries it for themselves in case I'm being overly critical of the game (if you can call it that).

I'm shocked that we've gone from the brilliant game that is Lemmings Touch to this pile of crap to be honest so I'm not at all happy about seeing this release. They could have re-released Lemmings Touch and made more money than this game would make, reducing Lemmings to a micro transaction driven game is just bad and it's sad fate for a once great IP.