Joke ideas for skills and objects

[Strato Incendus]

In the interest of preventing too many suggestion threads for only semi-serious new skills to be introduced, I thought we could use a "deposit" for people to blow off creative steam.

This is not me saying that I find any of the currently-proposed skills in the actual suggestion forum joke-worthy, or that I don't take them seriously!

It's just that I'm aware that there are people who are better at
- divergent thinking (also colloquially known as "brainstorming"), i.e. coming up with many different ideas initially,
and those who are better at
- convergent thinking, i.e. identifying the most useful approach and then disregarding everything else to get the optimal solution implemented.

My perception is (and I'm guilty of that myself, too! ) that a lot of skills get proposed in an initial burst of creativity, but when it comes to actually working on them, like designing sprites and discussing the corner cases of the behaviour how it would have to be implemented in the code, the idea gets dropped.

So if you just have some random idea for a skill or an object that you need to "store" somewhere or get rid off, feel free to "relieve yourself" here. Maybe sometime later, somebody willing to contribute, but devoid of own ideas, will skim through this thread, somebody who's better at convergent thinking, and will turn one of these random suggestions into something real. Or maybe not. Anyways, you got it out of your system!

On a side note, this might also sensitize users and give them a general feeling for the degree of usefulness of any particular skill they might think they'd like to see. Try to come up with some deliberately very narrow skills, just out of curiosity - and you'll see how many criteria a genuine skill has to fulfil to be worthwhile on its own!


I think one of the reasons Lemmings 2: The Tribes ended up with so many, barely-different skills was because the developers did not have such a space to blow off their creative steam - the graphic designers probably just started creating 8-pixel-animations for the sake of it (after all, rumor has it that death animations of 8-pixel-characters was how original Lemmings got started in the first place... ). And then the level designers had a field day with finding some obscure application for all of them, rather than going through a thorough and honest selection process.

In contrast, after this "trauma", they never really experimented with new skills again, except for copying a couple of the L2 skills to Lemmings 3 / An All New World of Lemmings (like the Jumper or Shimmier). Lemmings 3D and Revolution however went straight back to the "safe ground" of the original 8 skills.


So, without further ado, let's get started:

You think the Disarmer has a narrow range of applicability? Or that the L2 Roller, Diver, and Planter were borderline useless? Just you wait...

Here are my "joke ideas" for the time being:

The Sucker. This is a lemming that walks up to a water trigger area, gets out a straw or a hosepipe and removes the water area by pumping it empty. Like with the Disarmer, the trigger area is gone right away, even though the animation of the skill (and the water object) implies a slow, piece-by-piece extraction of the water. Since the straw or hosepipe is pointing slightly downwards, the lemming can stand at the edge of a water pont, and slightly above it, while performing the skill. Afterwards, lemmings can safely fall into the former, now empty water pit and walk through it.

The Firefighter. Gets out a hosepipe and removes fire trigger areas the same way. To make it even more narrow, you could enforce combination with the Sucker. Meaning, the Firefighter could only be used if that same lemming sucked away a water area elsewhere, so that he even has some "water supply" in the first place. The implications of this would be particularly stupid with the Fire tileset, where the lava actually acts like regular water, and could thus be used to put out the fire pits... or in the Marble tileset, where water could remove the "shredder" fire objects. Or in any of the custom tilesets using laser traps as fire objects, because water is soooo helpful against those...

The Gatekeeper. This lemming locks an exit so that lemmings can't enter if you don't want them to, because you still need them elsewhere. It is a permanent, on-again-off-again skill: The first time it walks past an open exit, it closes it; the next time it walks past the same exit, it re-opens it, and so on. It cannot unlock exits as long as there are any buttons in the level; the animation would be the lemming getting out a "key", i.e. this wouldn't work on exits that have an "electric lock", as represented by buttons. It can re-lock a button exit, though - in that case, all the buttons in the level would be reset to "switched off", and every single one would have to be pushed again. This would be the drawback of the skill. As such, it could also be pre-assigned to a lemming, neutral, or zombie, who walks in and can potentially ruin your day, after you have already pushed all the buttons...

The Trainer. This is a lemming that can only block athletes; all other lemmings walk straight through him. The athletes have to listen to him, after all - and he tells them they're not done with their routine yet, but need to get back to training some more...

The Lifter. This lemming can give another lemming standing right in front of him a leg-up to get over a wall, similarly to the Baseball Bat in Lix, but more easily controllable. One would have to agree on the maximum distance (expressed in "spawn rate") that could exist between two lemmings until the rear one would no longer be able to reach and lift the one on the front. The lift would also have to be slightly higher than the lemming itself, maybe even higher than a single Builder staircase, to even make it worthwhile compared to six-pixel-ascension, which lemmings can do by default.

The Moses. This skill can be assigned to a drowning lemming, like a Swimmer. However, it will result in the lemming digging down into the water area and removing an area equal to that of a Digger in the process, leaving behind a divided water trigger area to the left and right of the shaft.

The Arsonist. This is a lemming that creates a small fire area and then turns around so that he doesn't get killed himself. For what purpose? I don't know... maybe for killing zombies?

The Windmaker. This lemming creates an updraft trigger area of standard width in front of himself, with the bottom end of the trigger area being at the level of the lemming's feet.

The Melter. This is a Basher that can go through steel - and only through steel. The tool it uses looks like a blowtorch - in fact, there is such a skill in Worms World Party, however you can also direct it up and down diagonally.

The Gunman. Pulls out a rifle and fires off a horizontal projectile that can kill the first zombie it hits over a distance of up to 16 pixels (=the width of two standard steel blocks). The bullet hits the ground at the 16th pixel without making any indent into it, no matter whether the ground is steel or not.

The Electrocuter. This is another lemming that can kill zombies directly, but only when both itself and the target zombie are standing on a connected area of steel (it doesn't have to be the same piece of steel, but all the steel pieces that are supposed to serve as a conduct need to touch each other). It jumps up slightly while pointing a rod at the ground, so that itself doesn't get killed, but any zombie touching this same chunk of steel does. For added uselessness, it could also affect friendly lemmings (both regular ones and neutrals) that touch the same steel area - would only make sense, flavour-wise...


I don't currently have any ideas for borderline-useless objects, but feel free to contribute those as well...

[Strato Incendus]

...and a couple more, in a separate post, in order not to lose the overview .

The Vine Swinger. Attaches a vine to a ceiling and uses it to swing across a gap or up a small altitude (the trajectory of the lemming is a curve). Like the chain in Lemmings 2, but easier to control.

The Catcher. Waits at the position where the skill is assigned, arms stretched out, until another lemming touches him. If a lemming falls from the top and lands on top of the Catcher, the Catcher will prevent the Faller from splatting, acting as a one-time-use anti-splat pad. Since the Catcher waits for another lemming to arrive, it can also be used to have a lemming simply stand still somewhere (as Blockers are sometimes being used), without actually acting in any way similar to a Blocker. Consequently, this skill can also be used to compress two lemmings for compression-method solutions.
All in all, this one would actually be comparatively useful, it seems...

The Kamikaze. Inspired by Worms World Party, you would select an angle for this lemming, like with e.g. the Archer in Lemmings 2: Click once to pick the lemming, who will then stand still until the second click, which defines the angle. The maximum is 90 degrees (vertical and upwards), the minimum 0 degrees (=horizontal movement in the direction the lemming is facing). He then moves along a straight line into that direction quickly, ignoring any gaps, traps, or other objects or lemmings in his path, until he hits terrain (or a zombie), at which he explodes, leaving behind a crater like a regular Bomber, and killing any zombie in the area of effect.
In short: This one is a Bomber that works at distance, while still taking the lemming with it, in contrast to other distance-destruction skills, like the L2 Mortar or Bazooker.

The Bungee-Jumper. This is another one inspired by Worms World Party. Similar to the Slider in Lemmings 2, this lemming can survive splat-height drops. However, he doesn't require a straight, Climber-friendly wall to slide down, and doesn't change the direction he's facing: He can also jump off cliffs, simply attaching a rope to the last pixel of terrain before falling head-first to the bottom. He should generally leave a couple of pixels between the edge of the cliff and himself, so that he can actually perform a "curved" jumping move while turning upside-down. This is also to prevent him from hitting terrain in case he jumps down a straight wall (reason see below).
Bungee-Jumpers can't be assigned any skills while jumping; instead, any type of click onto the bungee-jumping lemming will cause him to unattach the rope from his feet and transition back to being a regular Faller. As such, fall height is re-calculated from where the lemming gets off the rope, thus enabling him to survive splat-height drops as a one-time-only thing, rather than as a permanent skill like the Floater, Glider, or Slider.
In contrast, if the lemming hits terrain while being upside down, i.e. bumps his head on the ground during the bungee jump, he will just splat regularly, because he broke his neck.
There probably would have to be a minimum and a maximum height at which this skill works - minimum 64 pixels (=splat height, otherwise it would be useless), maximum maybe one standard level height (=160 pixels), so that lemmings can't just have an endless bungee rope across vertical levels.
Still, the main reason for this skill would be having a one-time-only Floater, much like the L2 Kayaker is a one-time-only Swimmer.

The Flooder. Similar to the Sucker, Firefighter, and Arsonist mentioned above, this one would get out a hosepipe and pour out water into a pit. This water would behave the same way that the terrain created by Fillers or Glue Pourers does in Lemmings 2: The Tribes, flowing as far as it can while covering every place where it is with a water trigger area. This can be used to allow Swimmers to safely drop somewhere where lemmings would otherwise splat, as well as in order to cover up trap triggers, because now the Swimmers can just swim over them. Of course, it could also be used to kill non-Swimmer zombies.
A very clever use would be to use water that is only in a given place temporarily: Assign a Flooder while standing on flat terrain, so that the water will pour onto said terrain and slide forwards, until it drops into a pit that can contain it, or simply down a cliff and off the screen. Just like the glue in Lemmings 2, the water trigger area will now move (1 pixel in height) across the terrain. Any Swimmer landing inside the area in the meantime could use it to prevent splatting; it could also cover up trap triggers that just stick out 1 pixel. Most viciously, this one-pixel-in-height water area could still be used to kill lemmings (such as zombies) who are standing on the terrain the water is flowing over - i.e. they'd simply be washed away by the tide.
All in all, this seems more useful than the Arsonist.
Except that it would require quite an extension of how water areas work and behave in NeoLemmix.

The Tank. A permanent skill which makes a lemming invulnerable to fire objects and triggered traps. The animation would be a lemming covered in metal plating. As such, this lemming could still drown in water areas. It would be debatable whether he could still be turned into a Swimmer, as "drowning in water" is just a regular behaviour this lemming would keep, like any other lemming - or whether it should be made explicitly impossible by making Swimmer and Tank mutually exclusive, much like Floater and Glider. In contrast to the Disarmer, it's only this individual lemming that gets immune to traps, which seems to have more uses than disabling the trap for good once a single Disarmer touches it.
Also, the Tank could safely walk among Zombies without getting infected - but wouldn't actually end up killing them. He'd simply pass through them.
All in all, this is similar to what Ghosts used to be, except that Tanks can of course still interact with exits and other objects (pickup skills, buttons, splitters, teleporters etc.). Ghosts would also ignore water, which is still lethal and thus the Achilles's heel of the Tank. Finally, Ghosts encountering zombies would end up intimidating those just like regular lemmings, causing the zombies to turn around, whereas the Tank would just ignore them and walk right through them. He could be assigned a Blocker, though, to turn zombies around.

The Flic-Flac. This skill is semi-permanent, a combination of the pretty useless L2 skills that are the Runner and the Hopper: The lemming moves across any type of terrain a regular Walker can move across, but doing a constant flic-flac, i.e. successively being in a regular position, or upside down. The position marker of the lemming (regularly located at its feet) would thus constantly rotate. This would allow the lemming to hit buttons or pickup skills located in the air or under low-enough ceilings, and do the same on the ground (while a Shimmier could only trigger stuff under the ceiling, but usually not on the ground, unless inside something very narrow, like a Basher tunnel). The skill would be interrupted as soon as the lemming would turn into a Faller. Hitting a Blocker would simply result in the lemming continuing to flic-flac into the opposite direction.

The Cowboy. Gets out a lasso with which he can catch another lemming and pull that lemming towards himself. This would work on the same horizontal level, as well as at a slight angle (a lemming standing slightly higher or lower than the Cowboy). The Cowboy could thus pull another lemming across a gap. The "pulled" lemming can hit any triggers he passes through, whether those are pickup skills, buttons, teleporters, traps... consequently, this skill could also once again be used to kill zombies, by catching them with a lasso, which would result in them infecting the Cowboy if he actually completed the entire performance of the skill. However, if the trajectory leads through a trap, water, or fire, the zombie would obviously be killed by that.

The Intruder. This is a lemming that can't be turned around, except by Walkers, Blockers, or Steel. He will walk through any type of terrain he runs into, however never fall through terrain. This is similar to the "unalterable terrain" gimmick when using a Basher, but of course without skill assignment. As such, the Intruder will usually move through terrain horizontally only - however, he can be made to go upward by assigning a Builder to him while inside a section of terrain. Once you stop assigning new Builders, he will continue to walk through the terrain at whatever altitude he's currently at. Assigning destructive skills to Intruders will remove the terrain regularly. As such, you could send an Intruder through a one-way wall and have him bash it away from the other side - the challenge would be finding a way to turn him around on the other side, though.
The easiest introduction level I could imagine for this is giving the player two Intruders, sending both of them through a one-way wall. The first one then gets assigned a Blocker, which allows the second one to turn around and remove the one-way terrain. Unless there's steel or another Blocker at the other side of the level, the Intruder will then just walk off the screen and die, of course.

The Skateboarder. This one is inspired by Speedy Eggbert (the game which Jaimie's Techno and House tileset are taken from): The lemming gets on top of a skateboard, putting him at a slightly higher position than regular Walkers, as well as moving slightly faster. He can thus get over trigger areas of traps (or buttons you don't want to push yet, teleporters or splitters you want to avoid, etc.) that regular Walkers would walk into. In contrast to the Shimmier, he doesn't require a ceiling above his head to do this, plus he can be assigned more skills (Shimmiers can only be assigned the same skills as Fallers or Swimmers). For example, he could start bashing or fencing while still standing on his skateboard, creating a tunnel only he can reach (if the skateboard places him higher than 6 pixels above the ground; otherwise, he could get over traps and still create a tunnel accessible to regular Walkers). Admittedly, this might be difficult, because the assignment of the Basher or Fencer would stop him from being a Skateborder, therefore falling down.
What would definitely work though would be assigning a Builder or Platformer to a Skateborder, since those skills don't actually require terrain beneath the lemming's feet. He could thus start building or platforming in what would be mid-air for all the other lemmings, which can be a great way to isolate him from the crowd!
Also, most prominently, you could assign a Jumper to a Skateboarder, who would consequently jump a little further than regular Jumpers.
In contrast to Speedy Eggbert, the Skateboarder would only bypass traps by not even hitting them in the first place; if Speedy Eggbert hits a (one-use) trap in his game, those get destroyed instead, while Eggbert remains on the skateboard and survives.
All in all, this skill would have all the properties of the Runner (increased moving speed + wider jumps), while still offering some additional applications.
So if anyone ever seriously contemplates adding the Runner to NeoLemmix, maybe consider the Skateboarder first...

[namida]

I could see a few of these actually having potential, tbh (of course they'd need to go through the usual discussion and testing that any new skill does, and none of that* will be happening until the Jumper is out of the way). The Catcher in particular I see potential in, as you already noticed while writing it. The Tank, Gatekeeper and Skateboarder might be starting points for something useful too (although I don't think any of them are quite there as-is, either due to the skill itself or just "this would be too much hassle to implement").

While we're on the subject of joke skills, obligatory link to the April Fools announcement of a "Farter" skill.

* by "none of that will be happening", I'm meaning as in actual test runs / etc, and likely input / thoughts from myself will be somewhat limited. I don't by any means mean "you're not allowed to discuss it" - feel free to do so at any time.

[Strato Incendus]

Ah, I was already wondering how long this thread could continue before the joke ideas would start going "below the belt", likely to never come back.

Before anyone comes up with other skills referencing this area: Be reminded that we already have a skill that can "create" new lemmings, which is the Cloner .

Then again, since this thread is specifically about coming up with narrow and useless skills, that would be an even stronger case for such redundancy...

Getting back to the Farter, though: This actually once again reminds me of Worms World Party. Specifically of the weapon "The skunk", or something even more closely related called "Suicide Bomber". IIRC, this skill made the worm explode, and the gases from his intestines then ended up making all the other worms in the area sick, causing them to keep losing life points.

One more:

The Trapper. Similar to the Disarmer, this lemming can pick up a triggered trap and then set it up elsewhere. For example, somewhere where the crowd is easier to compress than at the original position, or somewhere where no other lemming goes in the first place... or, of course, somewhere where a zombie needs to be killed.
Crucially, if the Trapper can't find any place to dispose of the trap before leaving the game, he will dispose of it at the last possible location, with the trigger area exactly where the lemming was last standing. Meaning, if he exits and still carries the trap, he will drop the trap with the trigger area covering the exit. This should take precedent over lemmings exiting, as I've tried in my Pit Lems level "Triple security", where both a trap and water cover a locked exit trigger.
This could lead to puzzles where the challenge is how to get rid of the trap; in other cases, there might be several exits, and the Trapper would consequently have to go into a different exit than everyone else (or at least certain crowds would have to exit before him, maybe not everyone). Because the exit where the Trapper drops his trap would become useless afterwards, except if one can pick up a genuine Disarmer to disable it again.

[Simon]

The Cowboy. Gets out a lasso with which he can catch another lemming and pull that

The Catcher. Waits at the position where the skill is assigned, arms stretched out, until another lemming touches him

Yes, whatever involves other lemmings than the asignee is hot design stuff.

-- Simon

[WillLem]

In the interest of preventing too many suggestion threads for only semi-serious new skills to be introduced, I thought we could use a "deposit" for people to blow off creative steam.

Touché!

[Dullstar]

This isn't exactly a joke suggestion, but from the first post, it sounds like this was designed for brainstorming type suggestion, and I don't feel like writing this up as a proper suggestion, especially because I haven't done much thought on how useful this would be in practice.

What if there was an object that, when a lemming passes through its trigger area, removes all permanent skills from a lemming?

[IchoTolot]

What if there was an object that, when a lemming passes through its trigger area, removes all permanent skills from a lemming?

I like this concept.

It would most likely not be a high usage object, but currently there is no mechanic to remove permanent skills from lemmings.

Yes, the term permanent would loose it's meaning a bit, but this idea accomplished something new.

It could also be implemented as a skill instead of an object.

[Proxima]

Previous discussion of the "thief" object

[Strato Incendus]

What a coincidence - just last night, I also came up with a skill I wanted to call "The Thief"! However, I envisioned it as a permanent skill in and of it self, i.e. assigned to a lemming, and whenever that lemming touches other lemmings, those would lose all their permanent skills, with the thief taking them over instead.

I had already thought about the special case "What if the Thief is e.g. already a Glider and walks into a Floater (or vice versa)?" In that case, the "Thief" skill would take precedent over the Glider-Floater exclusivity: The regular Floater would still lose his Floater skill, and the Thief would stop being a Thief-Glider and now be a Thief-Floater instead.

Another question this would bring up is whether the Blocker would count as a "permanent" skill in this regard - if we consider all skills that can be pre-assigned to pre-placed lemmings, then yes. Having a Thief steal a Blocker skill wouldn't be that useful, though, because then he'd free the original Blocker, but would simply become a Blocker himself, just standing slightly more to the left or the right, depending on which of the Blocker's hands he touched.

Sometimes, you want to release a specific lemming from being a Blocker, though, even if you lose a different lemming in the process. (Nod to Armani for his recent solution to one of my levels from Lemmings Open Air ). Freeing a Blocker by bombing a different lemming to remove the terrain under the Blocker is actually not that uncommon in custom NeoLemmix packs - and yet oftentimes one of the hardest things to spot when planning your solution.

If there's genuine interest in reviving this discussion - or creating a serious discussion for any particular skill from this long list - I think we shouldn't hesitate to (re-)open a separate suggestion topic just for that individual skill.

That way, this thread can remain a broad overview of all rough sketches of brainstormed skill ideas, without the best suggestions getting lost in the bunch.

-----------------
Therefore, here are two more:

The Scuba Diver. Currently, there is no way to affect terrain anywhere within a water trigger area - Swimmers can survive them, but they always float to the top, and do so much more quickly than Gliders to in their pendant, the updraft. Scuba Divers, in contrast, could be assigned to Drowners (as well as just regular lemmings), i.e. just like Swimmers, but they'd continue to sink down to the bottom of the trigger area until they hit terrain. They'd have a bottle on their back (in the position where constructive skills have their bag of bricks) and a mouthpiece in front of their head (probably just 1 pixel large ). Once they hit terrain, they continue walking like regular Walkers. They can thus also perform skills here, for example building staircases in the middle of a water pond, or mining at the bottom of the pond to allow lemmings from below to access that water pond (Swimmers, for example - or, once again, if you want to drown zombies).
Being able to mine or dig at the bottom of a water pond has been a fetish of mine ever since I had Ghosts do it in "Lemmicks" (example levels are "Baptised by the Holy Ghost" and "Bathroom leak" on the Moist rank). It would be nice to have this as a skill, without all the other byproducts that came along with Ghosts (like also ignoring all other objects, plus the oftentimes irritating "intimidation" part).

And another, less serious one, staying true to the spirit of Lemmings 2: Showing Lemmings doing all kinds of mundane everyday-life tasks (like the Planter etc.) that don't really have anything more but fringe ingame use.

The Fisherman. Waits at the edge of a cliff (stationary skill like the Blocker) and holds down his fishing hook. Like the Catcher, he waits until he comes into contact with any other lemming. Usually, this will be a lemming from below, because his trigger area is quite a bit lower than himself. He can then pull that lemming up to himself. The intended application (which is very narrow) would obviously be to have the Fisherman pull Swimmers out of water pits that have walls too high for the Swimmers to get out by themselves. Even if those Swimmers are Climbers, water pits can definitely have non-straight walls that Climbers couldn't handle either - but a fishing hook in the water, serving as a rope, could.
Essentially, it's the missing piece to the Catcher (for lemmings from above) and the Cowboy (pulling lemmings to himself on a more or less horizontal level) - this one is the "puller" skill for lemmings from below.

[namida]

Another question this would bring up is whether the Blocker would count as a "permanent" skill in this regard - if we consider all skills that can be pre-assigned to pre-placed lemmings, then yes. Having a Thief steal a Blocker skill wouldn't be that useful, though, because then he'd free the original Blocker, but would simply become a Blocker himself, just standing slightly more to the left or the right, depending on which of the Blocker's hands he touched.

If we're using the "can be assigned to preplaced lemmings" criteria, he'd need to be able to steal Shimmiers too (and, technically, ascenders as well).

However, one could make an argument based on NL's internal workings that includes the Blocker but excludes the Shimmier; but I won't bore you with the technical details that lead to this.

[WillLem]

This isn't exactly a joke suggestion, but from the first post, it sounds like this was designed for brainstorming type suggestion, and I don't feel like writing this up as a proper suggestion, especially because I haven't done much thought on how useful this would be in practice.

What if there was an object that, when a lemming passes through its trigger area, removes all permanent skills from a lemming?

I've had this thought as well - especially with gliders, which often glide over an exit upon completion of a level and then need to be turned into a walker (I encountered this multiple times when playing through the all-new-skills challenge).

[WillLem]

Another question this would bring up is whether the Blocker would count as a "permanent" skill in this regard - if we consider all skills that can be pre-assigned to pre-placed lemmings, then yes. Having a Thief steal a Blocker skill wouldn't be that useful, though, because then he'd free the original Blocker, but would simply become a Blocker himself, just standing slightly more to the left or the right, depending on which of the Blocker's hands he touched.

Unless Blockers affect Thieves as well, and just turn them around. There would have to be a clear skill hierarchy.

The Scuba Diver. ... Once they hit terrain, they continue walking like regular Walkers. They can thus also perform skills here ... Being able to mine or dig at the bottom of a water pond has been a fetish of mine ever since I had Ghosts do it in "Lemmicks".

---

The Fisherman. ... The intended application ... would obviously be to have the Fisherman pull Swimmers out of water pits that have walls too high for the Swimmers to get out by themselves.

Both of these are great ideas! I wouldn't view these as joke ideas at all - swimmers are mostly useless unless the terrain either side of the water pit is low enough for them to walk out again.

Having played through both the entire Original and Oh No! levels with only new skills, I'd say the Swimmer was probably the least-used (I never used stoners coz I was going for all-saves, but would have used them far more otherwise). There are levels where Swimmers would have been useful if there was a way to use them underwater, have them perform skills when they hit the side or bottom of a water pit no matter how steep, or be able to be rescued from the water by another Lemming.

[namida]

...swimmers are mostly useless unless the terrain either side of the water pit is low enough for them to walk out again.

Having played through both the entire Original and Oh No! levels with only new skills, I'd say the Swimmer was probably the least-used...

While Swimmers are one of the less-useful new skills; that challenge is a very poor testing ground for them. First, of course, any level that uses them will be designed for them anyway. But that aside, there are a few ways they're more useful when used in combination with skills you don't have in that challenge - for starters, you could make the edge one where they can walk out (Fencer could do this, but it's far from ideal for it). Or, if they're a climber, they can climb up the edge.

[607]

So many ideas!!! Most of them are lovely too, thanks for sharing!!