Hidden/invisible objects: OK? Or not OK?

[WillLem]

I have hidden a teleporter in a backroute, which takes the player to a slightly more difficult-to-navigate area of the level.

I did this in the spirit of finding fun, inventive ways to get around The Backroute Problem (rather than just blocking it off with steel or one-way-arrows, or limiting time and/or skills).

Further to this, the backroute is actually there intentionally: the level was designed with this in mind and is titled Backroute To the Future.

My question is: given this information, is the hidden teleporter justified in this scenario?

Please note that, if I get an overwhelming response of "No!", I will edit this level to no longer feature a hidden teleporter. However, I would like this case to be discussed first so I can truly understand people's reasons against the idea when it's clearly done in good, clean fun, and with no intention to annoy or troll the player.

If the response is neutral or "Yes!", then I'll leave the level as it is.

[namida]

It's the same as any other case of hiding details: It misleads the player. Whether or not it's doing so along the intended route, or along a backroute, doesn't matter, because the player at first does not know what is or isn't a backroute - and indeed, might never know if they don't share replays / follow discussions. They only know whether a solution works or not - or at a glance, whether a solution should work or not (there's shades of this - perhaps a solution has potential but they're not sure if something measures up exactly - but this is still not a case of misleading, just a case of physics being hard to mentally simulate).

There are ways you can hide easter eggs that don't at all interfere with the functional aspects of the level. For example, you could have a no-effect object hidden behind terrain, with a graphic of a dancing Rick Astley. (This is just one possible suggestion. You could in fact make the graphic almost anything you like - of course I would advise making it very obvious that it's a no-effect easter egg, but that's about it.)

It's generally advised that it should be obvious that a backroute won't work out. Using this level as an example, such a fix would be placing steel or one-way arrows in the way. In some cases, it isn't possible to be obvious without either opening further backroutes, or breaking the intended solution - in this case, it should still not be misleading, even if it's hard to judge. It's much harder to give examples of this, but it could arise from eg. it isn't clear if two steel blocks line up such that they prevent a single direct miner - it's still clear to the player that this might not work.

There are still other ways you can play with backroutes. For example, if you've got a case where the backroute isn't obviously impossible, you could hide a no-effect object (as described above) just before the point at which the backroute fails. Or you could do the reverse - intended-looking solutions don't work out, and the actual solution is something that would feel more like a backroute (I've made a couple of levels like this).

[ccexplore]

I have hidden a teleporter in a backroute, which takes the player to a slightly more difficult-to-navigate area of the level.

I did this in the spirit of finding fun, inventive ways to get around The Backroute Problem (rather than just blocking it off with steel or one-way-arrows, or limiting time and/or skills).

Further to this, the backroute is actually there intentionally: the level was designed with this in mind and is titled Backroute To the Future.

Why hide the teleporter?  It sounds like the point is to transform a backroute that was originally so much easier than the intended solution as to cheapen the level considerably, and instead make it actually a more difficult alternate solution compared to the intended one, by virtue of the teleporting.  You can do that with a non-hidden teleporter just as well as a hidden one.

[IchoTolot]

Simply: No.

Make the teleporter visible and your plan will still work without misleading the player.

[Proxima]

In the main Lemminas topic, you asked: what if the intention was for the player to try the backroute first and find the hidden object by being tripped up by it?

If any decision in level design is made with the intention of wasting the player's time, it was the wrong decision.

I would like this case to be discussed first so I can truly understand people's reasons against the idea when it's clearly done in good, clean fun, and with no intention to annoy or troll the player.

Sorry if it feels like we're piling up on you, but I felt this needed a response. What about this is "clear"? If I'm playing a level, I'm on a solution path that should work (given what I know so far) and I find that hidden objects have been put there to block it, my thought is not going to be "the level designer thought this was fun", but rather "the level designer wanted to block this route, was determined to preserve their level's aesthetics, and just didn't think about playability".

Yes, things were different in the days of original Lemmings (Havoc 1, for example). The difference? Previous levels had let you know, in a relatively harmless way, that hidden traps were going to be a recurring hazard throughout the game. Without clear physics mode available, it became a regular part of gameplay to scout for hidden traps before starting to think about a solution. By contrast, NL culture is so strongly against hidden traps (and hidden information generally) that the player is accustomed to starting to think towards a solution at the very start of looking at the level. By the time they run into the hidden trap, they are on a path they believe to be a solution, and you are snatching away that victory.

[WillLem]

Due to overwhelming consensus, I will make the teleporter in Backroute To The Future visible in Lemminas V1.01.

Further to this, I will look at adding some sort of "in" and "out" indicator to the custom shimmery-light teleporters, or at least make them a different colour from each other so the player can determine which is which after encountering them for the first time in 1-5.

Just to continue the conversation though, two questions occur:

1) With clear physics mode now available (as well as traps being animated), it's now easier than ever to spot hidden traps: if a player really wants to solve the level before they've even started playing it (a practice I'm personally quite averse to), they need only switch on clear physics mode to reveal anything that the designer may have chosen to hide. With this in mind, why is it frowned upon to hide anything? Surely now more than ever, wouldn't you agree that it's a non-issue?

2) For me, a big part of the enjoyment of a video game is hitting the "GO!" button and seeing what happens; it's as much about exploration and discovery as it is about skill and precision. If all the player wants to do is solve the level without actually going for it and trying anything out, why have the game animated at all? Why not just make it a series of picture puzzles?

I understand and appreciate the sheer mental prowess of being able to solve a level in your head without actually doing anything: it's no mean feat, and I applaud it. But it shouldn't take away from the game for people who prefer a more action-and-discovery oriented approach.

With these things being said and the questions having been asked, I do want my pack to be accepted and liked by the community, so I will make the necessary changes and try to avoid the practice of hiding objects in the future.

[Proxima]

1) With clear physics mode now available (as well as traps being animated), it's now easier than ever to spot hidden traps: if a player really wants to solve the level before they've even started playing it (a practice I'm personally quite averse to), they need only switch on clear physics mode to reveal anything that the designer may have chosen to hide. With this in mind, why is it frowned upon to hide anything? Surely now more than ever, wouldn't you agree that it's a non-issue?

Putting on CPM and spending a minute or two scouring the level for hidden information is not enjoyable. But once you start hiding traps, the player is going to feel they have to do this on every level. See comment above about wasting the player's time.

2) For me, a big part of the enjoyment of a video game is hitting the "GO!" button and seeing what happens; it's as much about exploration and discovery as it is about skill and precision.

The whole reason why video game genres exist is so that different games can fulfil different needs. Exploration and discovery are great, but they don't belong in NL, which is a narrowly focused puzzle game.

If all the player wants to do is solve the level without actually going for it and trying anything out, why have the game animated at all?

Strato's straw man rears its ugly head again. No-one, I repeat no-one, has said this. What I am saying is that when I start playing a NeoLemmix level, I get straight into thinking about possibilities for what the solution might be. If something looks likely, I may well try it out immediately! Given the complexity of terrain in a typical level, often I can't know if a builder or miner can get from A to B without sending a lemming there and looking at the skill shadow, and that's fine; that's an expected part of the gameplay. I do not expect to have to send lemmings to scout the level to look for hidden objects, because that's not part of usual NL gameplay. I will play levels with the expectation that there are no hidden objects, not because that's inherently better or worse, but because that is how I have been trained by NL culture.

I understand and appreciate the sheer mental prowess of being able to solve a level in your head without actually doing anything

Okay, you weren't here and you don't know, but still. A while back, we had exactly this discussion with Strato Incendus when he was new. We tried, patiently, to explain why we object to hidden traps. He responded with exactly the same straw man, twisting everything we said into "Oh, you think you should be able to solve a level before playing it." No, we do not. I'm sorry, I'm now feeling extra frustrated, because I'm having to spend more time going over the same arguments again and trying really hard to make them clear, and it's not entirely your fault, because you didn't know about the earlier discussion. I hope you understand that I don't feel any personal grievance towards you, and I'm really glad that you've joined and are already making great contributions to the community. Let's leave hidden traps in the past, though

[Strato Incendus]

Given that I basically got kicked out of another forum for "discussion-disturbing behaviour" for pointing out when people would use straw men - even though that is by definition a criticism of the argument a person makes and not of the person themselves - I feel the need to respond .

I can understand Proxima here, because this "getting tired of having to deal with the same twisted arguments over and over again" was precisely what also led me to point out straw men in that other forum in the first place.

So first of all, I wanna say I'm happy people here seem to already be familiar with the general concept of what a straw man is, rather than calling somebody a know-it-all for merely introducing it to them.

If all the player wants to do is solve the level without actually going for it and trying anything out, why have the game animated at all?

Strato's straw man rears its ugly head again. No-one, I repeat no-one, has said this.

Proxima is right that no-one explicitly said this, but this is the premise that people acted upon. Let me point you to the thread of my very first pack (Old-Formats only), Paralems.

The discussion arose because several people reported problems in terms of the supposed impossibility to solve my level "Skies aflame" (Disgusting rank, level 10), which also appears on the Encore rank of Lemmings World Tour.

Specifically, they were unaware that the lemmings on that level were pre-assigned Swimmers right out of the hatch. Note that there was no automatic hatch labeling in Old Formats when it came to pre-assigned skills; instead, people would use Pickup Skills (sometimes set to "fake", sometimes covered by steel, both to prevent these pickups from actually being collectible) to label their hatches. While this is certainly convenient, I still don't consider it necessary to this day.

This practice became particularly absurd when a) it was applied to pre-placed single lemmings (some level designers would put Pickup Skills onto the terrain below or above those pre-placed lemmings as "labels"; New Formats automatically shows the symbols above a pre-placed lemming's head at the beginning of a level); and b) when you had multiple hatches overlapping to effectively produce one hatch releasing different types of lemmings. My levels "Beware of collectivism" from Pit Lems and "Born this way" from Lemmings World Tour were kind of a response to this discussion, in order to demonstrate that absurdity.

So far, I haven't seen any general consensus yet that overlapping hatches would be considered unfair, btw. For example, they're also frequently used to successively release lemmings facing to the left and to the right. In New Formats, this can be identified by the arrow above the hatch pointing in both directions. When it comes to different pre-assigned skills coming out of the same hatch, though, the Old-Formats labeling tradition was actually more convenient, because it allowed you to place the pickup skills next to each other. In New Formats, skill labels will only be placed next to each other if you have athletes (=with more than one permanent skill) coming out of the same hatch; however, if you have one hatch with Climbers and one hatch with Floaters overlapping, the labels will also overlap, making them hard to identify.

Anyways, people believed this level with pre-assigned Swimmers could not be solved "just from looking at it". It didn't occur to me how anyone could come to this conclusion, partly because I didn't know about the tradition of hatch labeling, but also because I didn't consider it necessary, given that you would see those lemmings are Swimmers as soon as the first one gets released from the hatch.

Here are the specific quotes:

Also, I believe Disgusting 10 is impossible just looking at it. I even used clear physics mode to see if there were hidden exits which there weren't.

I also thought Disgusting 10 was impossible just from looking... And then I started it and saw that all the Lemmings were swimmers.

3) Do you have a working replay for "Skies aflame" (Disgusting 10)? As far as I can tell the hatch and the exit are completely separated by the steel wall and the fire trigger areas on the top.

Are you sure all of those are fire areas?

(Explanation: "Skies aflame" is a fire level; Nepster apparently forgot that the lava in the orig_fire tileset is regular water. This was nothing I changed about the level! )

Ok, this is a perfect example why markes above exits with preassigned skills are so useful. I paused before the first lemming appeared and then decided the level is impossible due to the missing swimmers.

Note: Nepster wrote "exit" here when he probably meant "hatch", because exits can't have preassigned skills. But he mixed up those two terms in that same thread elsewhere again, when he spoke of lemmings going "into a hatch" (which is impossible). I think he maybe regarded the hatches as "exits" from which lemmings are released into a level, but I doubt most other users would resort to this terminology.

Skies aflame: You are absolutely correct, but I have the tendency to pause even before the first lemmings appears and to plan my route...

Here you can clearly see people giving up on the level before they have even attempted the execution. More than that, they actively reported this to me as an "error" or "impossible level" before even trying (when I had made sure all my levels were solvable and had saved replays for every single one of them to prove it).

This level "Skies aflame" exposed that because it's literally impossible to overlook the relevant information as soon as you start the level for the first time. You can only fall victim to that confusion if you have never even once allowed a single lemming to leave the hatch.

That's what I mean by "people acted upon" the premise that it should be possible to solve the entire level in their head first before even attempting it in practice.

This was my response:

It's quite baffling to me that people claim a level were impossible even before they have actually tried to play it ^^. And no, calculating through everything in your head might be "trying to solve it", but not "trying to play it". Even pure puzzle levels often require some trial and error, e.g. because a player can easily under- or overestimate the length of a builder / platformer, or the angle of a miner / fencer, or just the time a lemming needs to get somewhere. Even some of Nepster's levels, which I would consider the epitome of "puzzly", have such timing challenges involved. How would you be supposed to solve these types of levels just by thinking through everything in your head?

In contrast, me personally, I would never go as far as accusing someone of having made an impossible level without at least having tried a couple of things by clicking through them. If the solution doesn't work out in my head, I usually tend to think I'm too stupid to mentally crack the levels of more experienced players / level designers, and decide to just give it a go by trying some stuff.

Nobody accused me of having misrepresented their position back then (Proxima was also in the thread, he didn't do so either). And looking over that discussion again now, I fail to see how I was strawmanning anyone here? When several people provably felt "entitled" enough to a completely pre-level-start cognitive solution that they would report a level as impossible before even having made a single practical attempt?

I will acknowledge though that this philosophy may have changed in the meantime, because one of the strongest proponents of "strictly-fair puzzle philosophy" - that is Nepster - is currently no longer active in the forums.


The other issue regarding hidden traps was really more about to what extent traps can be considered "hidden". Specifically, Paralems got (in-)famous for animal traps, i.e. "hiding" traps behind terrain shaped like animals. Meaning, from a purely game-mechanical perspective, those traps would count as hidden, but flavour-wise, it's completely obvious where the traps are.

I do like how you put the traps behind the creatures. It just looks neat, even though there are some who I know will hate this.

nin10doadict then actually went on to employ this trap design on one of his levels himself ("Super Mecha Death Gators" from CasuaLemmings). But he made sure to credit me for the general idea within the landscape of that level!

[namida]

So far, I haven't seen any general consensus yet that overlapping hatches would be considered unfair, btw. For example, they're also frequently used to successively release lemmings facing to the left and to the right. In New Formats, this can be identified by the arrow above the hatch pointing in both directions. When it comes to different pre-assigned skills coming out of the same hatch, though, the Old-Formats labeling tradition was actually more convenient, because it allowed you to place the pickup skills next to each other. In New Formats, skill labels will only be placed next to each other if you have athletes (=with more than one permanent skill) coming out of the same hatch; however, if you have one hatch with Climbers and one hatch with Floaters overlapping, the labels will also overlap, making them hard to identify.

Personally - I would say, if it's done so that the spawn order is different from expected, it's misleading - whether this is a mild case ("mimic the DOS spawn order on a 2/3-entrance level instead of using NL's"), a moderate one ("only one lemming comes out of this entrance, the rest come from another"), or an extreme one ("it's completely random and all-over-the-place!"). This is in particular because there's nothing to even hint to the player that something's going on.

On the other hand, when it's done for alternate directions, the overlapping direction indicators make this fairly noticable. Likewise for different permanent skills - the player might need to let a few lemmings spawn to be able to tell what they are, but the jumbled overlap at least draws attention to that this is going on, and thus immediately is aware they need to investigate what skills (and in what order) spawn from it; they're not suddenly being thrown off when they expected a normal A-B-C-A-B-C spawning but almost all the lemmings are coming out of one entrance instead.

For the same reason - I would say the Swimmer example in the above post counts as "unfair design" back in old-formats where no indication was given. And thus, in new-formats, where it would be clearly marked as spawning Swimmers, the exact same design would no longer be unfair.

[Crane]

One thing I will say... by it's very definition, a backroute is not intentional. A teleporter could be used in place of a wall or a trap, but outside of troll levels, you shouldn't be doing unfair things like hiding traps in walls (where a steel plate would suffice).

[Strato Incendus]

For the same reason - I would say the Swimmer example in the above post counts as "unfair design" back in old-formats where no indication was given. And thus, in new-formats, where it would be clearly marked as spawning Swimmers, the exact same design would no longer be unfair.

I actually did add the labeling pickup skill to the version of that same level that is included in Old-Formats Lemmings World Tour . In New Formats, as you said, this is no longer necessary - and since fake objects aren't a thing anymore either, using fake pickups as labels (where the context makes it obvious that they aren't intended to be picked up) isn't even possible anymore - you can only place actual pickups above the hatch, which might in turn lead to new backroutes again.

"Beware of collectivism" in Pit Lems did not feature hatch labeling, precisely because that level was supposed to point out the conundrum of hatch labeling when it came to overlapping / different-athletes-from-the-same-hatch entrances.

In contrast, for "Born this way" in Lemmings World Tour, I did attach labeling pickup skills to the hatch in Old Formats - and placed them in the order of release from left to right (Swimmer, Glider, Floater, Climber). But that's still ambiguous: Labels placed next to each other could either mean that all lemmings in that hatch have those skills, or that you have different hatches from which lemmings of only one skill type each are released. In this case, the context should made it clear, because no lemming can be a Glider and a Floater at the same time. But with any other combination, say, Swimmer, Glider, Climber, Disarmer, this pattern of hatch labeling could just as easily mean that all lemmings coming out of said hatch are X-Athletes.

[WillLem]

Please allow me to begin this post by saying that my argument here is with the point of view, not the people. You're all lovely and I'm glad to be talking this through with you.

Putting on CPM and spending a minute or two scouring the level for hidden information is not enjoyable.

That's why I almost never use it, and much prefer to play the level and see what happens!

But once you start hiding traps, the player is going to feel they have to do this on every level. See comment above about wasting the player's time.

Agreed; I wouldn't want people to feel they have to check every one of my levels over in CPM before playing it. But then, I also wish people didn't mind encountering the occasional hidden object so much.

EDIT - I'd probably say that 1 level per rank with a gimmicky idea/hidden object is acceptable. Any more than that and even I would get tired of it. Unless it's a concept pack of all-gimmick levels, of course.

Exploration and discovery are great, but they don't belong in NL, which is a narrowly focused puzzle game.

Wow, really? I think we'll just have to agree to disagree here: I see way more in NeoLemmix than it just being a puzzle game.

NeoLemmix has developed far beyond the original Lemmings in many ways, no doubt about it. However, the game from which it evolved has that explore & discover mentality as well as being a picture-puzzle game. It would be very sad for it to completely lose that element of gameplay.

Strato's straw man rears its ugly head again. No-one, I repeat no-one, has said this.

Accusing me of straw manning isn't really fair. There have been very strong implications in a number of posts that certain players prefer to be able to solve a level in their head before actually playing it. I'm not inclined to scour past posts to find such examples, but this is the impression that I've gained from what has been said by various people. The fact it's been an issue in the past would indicate that I may not be entirely incorrect in reaching this conclusion, although it may not have explicitly been said.

I do not expect to have to send lemmings to scout the level to look for hidden objects, because that's not part of usual NL gameplay. I will play levels with the expectation that there are no hidden objects, not because that's inherently better or worse, but because that is how I have been trained by NL culture.

Training one way of playing a game doesn't preclude any other way of playing that game. Look at Monopoly rules: I don't think any two sets of people play it exactly the same way! Also, again - CPM removes the need to scout an entire level for hidden objects, although I am definitely in agreement that a player shouldn't have to use it every time. Ideally, this wouldn't need to happen anyway; hidden objects would just be encountered and then dealt with as part of one of level's natural routes (as they were in original Lemmings).

I hope you understand that I don't feel any personal grievance towards you, and I'm really glad that you've joined and are already making great contributions to the community.

Thank you. I'm glad about this and I too have no personal grievances with anyone here, least of all yourself: you've already done a lot to help me out and you're always patient enough to respond to my posts, for which I'm grateful. As I've said before, I'm happy to be part of such a great community for one of my favourite all-time video games.

My issue here is with the viewpoint. I just disagree that hidden objects are always bad. Unfortunately for me, this is not currently a popular perspective on the forum and I'm having to edit my levels and curb my creative tendencies to suit others' preferences; I'm fine with this because ultimately I do want people to enjoy my packs and I don't want to be seen as an unnecessary troublemaker, but it would be good to understand the reasons I'm making such sacrifices.

So far, the main reason that seems to be forthcoming is (and I'm paraphrasing from various sources): "hidden objects are always misleading, unfair and have no place in the game." And OK, I can live with that viewpoint - but I don't agree. Sometimes hidden objects can be a fun, exciting and novel way to spice up a game; as long they aren't used excessively and they're carefully referred to by the title, or by the level's design.

All of this being said: there was a time when even NeoLemmix had invisible terrain, wrap, fake exits, and all sorts of other gimmicks: these wouldn't have featured at all if certain players didn't enjoy such elements. The "fair puzzle" mentality has prevailed, and so the other elements of the game have gradually been phased out by natural selection. I'm a bit late to the party, it would seem, so I'm having to get used to this.

Something tells me that I won't be the last though.

[Proxima]

NeoLemmix has developed far beyond the original Lemmings in many ways, no doubt about it. However, the game from which it evolved has that explore & discover mentality as well as being a picture-puzzle game. It would be very sad for it to completely lose that element of gameplay.

I wouldn't even describe original Lemmings as having an "explore & discover mentality". The phrase brings to mind games like Super Mario Bros and Hollow Knight, where exploration is encouraged by finding good hidden things -- fun powerups, health refills, shortcuts that let you skip difficult sections, and so on. In Lemmings, the only good thing that's hidden is the exit on two levels -- and Lost something? hides it so obviously that it might as well not be hidden at all, while in X Marks the Spot most players will go for the visible exit instead of spending time looking for a hidden one (even with the hint in the title).

It's true that original Lemmings encourages the player to leave the game unpaused and deal with obstacles as they arise instead of planning ahead. (In at least the Mac version, the manual doesn't even bother telling you that P pauses the game!) Most levels have plenty of excess skills so that you can get out of an unanticipated situation -- even a level as hard as Save Me has more skills than you need.

Over time (starting even in the days before NeoLemmix) the community found lots of interesting ideas for puzzles in the Lemmings level space. Excess skills were often a source of backroutes, and it became the norm for harder levels to trim the skillset to the skills actually needed by the solution -- even when we were using engines like Cheapo and CustLemm that don't have NeoLemmix's fine control features. The advent of framestepping made excess skills even less needed.

Given this, and the sheer difficulty of most community content, pausing and planning ahead feels like a natural consequence. I dare say it will become part of your playstyle too when you get on to more difficult packs

On a side note: I have no idea what you mean by "picture puzzle" as opposed to just puzzle. It seems to be a somewhat derogatory term. I'm sure that for most of the long-timers here, the reason we've stuck around so long and are still enjoying the game is that we love solving puzzles, and the itchy feeling of being stuck followed by the immense satisfaction of seeing a solution fit together; and NeoLemmix satisfies our desire for more of that feeling in a way that few other games can. When we want other feelings (such as the joy of exploring a world), there are other games for that.

Accusing me of straw manning isn't really fair. There have been very strong implications in a number of posts that certain players prefer to be able to solve a level in their head before actually playing it.

Fair enough; I apologise for using such a loaded word. I still think you are wrong: I don't believe anyone here prefers to solve levels before playing them. I think you are just reading this implication into posts that are trying to say something different: we normally start trying to solve a level as soon as we see it, and we expect levels to facilitate this by being honest about what their puzzle actually is.

All of this being said: there was a time when even NeoLemmix had invisible terrain, wrap, fake exits, and all sorts of other gimmicks: these wouldn't have featured at all if certain players didn't enjoy such elements.

Gimmicks were added when NeoLemmix was namida's solo effort, and the community had zero input into what features were included or not. Invisible terrain (in the sense of terrain the same colour as the background) is supported by the original game, and remained supported by inertia until we took efforts to actively exclude it.

[ccexplore]

All of this being said: there was a time when even NeoLemmix had invisible terrain, wrap, fake exits, and all sorts of other gimmicks: these wouldn't have featured at all if certain players didn't enjoy such elements.

Earlier development of NeoLemmix is not quite as community-focused as it is today.  Features are added based mainly on the whims of whoever's programming the game.  Things are featured more because the person updating NeoLemmix thinks it might be cool.  You could technically say that the person who added the feature is a player who would enjoy it, although it might be less "enjoy" than simply "it seems cool at the time".

Really as far as the original Lemmings games go, the only gimmick that's commonly used is hidden traps.  And that gimmick always loses its power immediately once the player reached that part of level.  If you ask people to pick their favorite levels from those games, in no cases will a level be picked because it features lots of gimmicks.  Presence of gimmicks is either a non-factor for favoriting the level, or for some people, actually a detractor that lessens enjoyment.

For current versions of NeoLemmix, just assume that the player will always start off examining the level in clear physics mode or even directly in the level editor.  Keep that in mind when the temptation arises to throw in a gimmick.

[ccexplore]

owever, the game from which it evolved has that explore & discover mentality as well as being a picture-puzzle game.

I actually don't agree at all that the original games have much emphasis on "explore & discover", though i guess it depends on what you mean exactly by that.  Sure, you may be encouraged to not use pausing so much and try to just wing it to solve a level.  But that's just "exploring" in the sense of trying different ideas in the course of solving a level.  And it's just a possible strategy for level solving, just as careful planning ahead is another strategy.

The one thing that to me makes Lemmings games less exploratory is, you can scroll and see any parts of the level right from the start!  At least games like Mario don't let you do that, you have to actually first move your character to some part of the level in order to see it.  That makes those games a lot more "explore & discover" compared to Lemmings.  It would've also been easy for the Lemmings game developers to, say, add hidden/buried coins and treasures and what-not scattered throughout the level that you can uncover to increase your score or something, and that could've easily add a much more exploratory aspect to Lemmings games.  But over the entire course of the franchise, not a single Lemmings game has done anything like that.