Lemmings Quartet [Finished]

[Apjjm]

Update: This is now released



I've been working on a short pack featuring 16 levels & 4 lemmings

The pack uses the original & sega tilesets (+ some from the L2 & L3 sets as decoration) + the original 8 skills.

Difficulty
Difficulty is looking to be fairly hard, but not extreme - if you have completed the original game and maybe had a play through another custom level pack it should be approachable!
In terms of comparisons to other packs, the latter half of the pack is probably not too far away in difficulty to last rank of Lemmings Plus 1 one way or another?

Progress
- Level completion (Done - 18 + 6 bonus)
- Initial level polish pass (Done)
- Playtesting & Backroute fixing & responding to feedback (Nearly there - more playtests always welcome - even last minute ones!)
- Various bits of artwork & packaging things up (Done)
- Music (Done)

As this is a shorter pack with a much narrower focus, It should be a lot easier for me to complete than my previous WIP pack.

[NieSch]

Cool idea to have only levels with 4 lemmings!

[jkapp76]

I'm interested.

I always thought it would be cool to have every level begin with lemmings trapped in an area. Then you'd have to rescue these lemmings to have enough total to win each level.

I wanted to learn level-making and do such a pack, but never got that far. "Lemmings to the rescue."

I play guitar and record music. I'd love to record a psychedelic rock themed lemmings soundtrack. A colorful mind tingling pack. But I'm weird like that.

The four lemmings is cool. Something similar to expect for each level that in unlike other packs.

[kaywhyn]

Awesome to see that you've returned, Apjjm. This seems like a cool concept for a level pack, so I'm definitely looking forward to this when it's released.

[Apjjm]

Thanks for the comments

I was initially only going to have 10 levels but then scope creep happened a few times to get to 16. I'll probably do a bonus rank with some interesting levels / variants that I played around with during development. Below is a screenshot of a level I am working on currently that has two variants I'm playing around with at the moment - this will probably look a bit different in the released pack!



Also, the grouping feature is very useful and can create some nice effects that you can't do anywhere near as easily otherwise - I wish I had found out about this sooner!

[Armani]

Wow these levels look beautiful!
They are probably the most artistic lemmings levels I've seen so far.

[Apjjm]

So I took a bit of break to play through the new monster hunter stories game (which took way longer than expected), and then spent far too much time working out how to do the idea in the above level in a 'reasonable' number of pieces. I guess given the limited number of levels I probably shouldn't post too many more pictures as I want to save some as a surprise!

On the plus side, I have one level left to terrain pass on, another to add some detailing to and then a couple more to create still. I have quite a few ideas I'd like to experiment with but it turns out having such a limited number of lemmings often leads to the original plan going out the window as soon as I start testing things out.

[Apjjm]

So an end of week update: after reaching a point where I'm happy with the puzzle in what I think will be the end level I now only have 1 puzzle left to make .

Other than that, I spent quite a bit of time tweaking and updating all the other levels throughout the pack to try and rule out some backroutes & unintended solutions + streamline the intended solutions a little bit where it made sense to. For playtesting I'm in a bit of two minds about that at the moment - part of me just wants to release the pack when it's ready and fix anything the first players find, another would like to release a more polished set of levels. I'm sort of leaning towards option 1 at the moment - though happy to be guided by recommendations on this really!

[WillLem]

I would definitely recommend playtesting, as I'm sure many people on the forum would. Happy to volunteer if you want someone of about mid-range solving ability to assess your levels

[namida]

One thing I've come to learn - a lot of people (myself included, actually, back when I tended to play packs much in general) would play through a pack once, and not touch it again even if it's updated, after that. Therefore, while you can never have it perfect, it's good to have the pack in a fairly polished state by the time most people play it.

(This shouldn't be taken as a discouragement of updating the pack post-release - because many people's "one time" will be after you've updated it. It's just good to at least get the worst backroutes / other issues out of the way ahead of public release.)

[Apjjm]

Thanks for the advice I will do the playtesting approach ! I do want to have a complete pack before I give it to a playtester, as I would very much like them to be able to play through the whole thing with the levels in the right order etc rather than it being a more disorganised collection of levels - I appreciate this might might make the process of getting the pack out a bit slower though!

WillLem - If you are happy to volunteer then that would be a great help! Thanks . I will drop you a PM when the remaining level is completed.

[Pieuw]

I'm blown away by the look of your levels I also remember an older topic of yours featuring great-looking levels.
This is a promising project!

[WillLem]

WillLem - If you are happy to volunteer then that would be a great help! Thanks . I will drop you a PM when the remaining level is completed.

You're welcome, I'm looking forward to it. I'd be honoured to give this pack a look-through before release

[Apjjm]

Weekly update: all levels have a first pass completed . I have put together some of the levels that didn't make the main rank or (or are an appropriate aqualems level) into a bonus rank of 5 extra levels. The bonus rank may very well expand later - there are a few levels I didn't include mainly because the solution hasn't changed much even if the terrain looks different - If people would be interested in seeing these (in particular, the snail level has quite a humble start) anyway I can include them!

There is one level that is from aqualems that I am not currently including the bonus pack, mainly because I revisited the puzzle on that level and I'm now much happier with the intended solution for it (and it only really shares a terrain element, the puzzle and overall level shape is very different).

I also had a go at doing a logo - spent far too long trying out different filters before finding one that looked kinda nice:

[GigaLem]

Weekly update: all levels have a first pass completed . I have put together some of the levels that didn't make the main rank or (or are an appropriate aqualems level) into a bonus rank of 5 extra levels. The bonus rank may very well expand later - there are a few levels I didn't include mainly because the solution hasn't changed much even if the terrain looks different - If people would be interested in seeing these (in particular, the snail level has quite a humble start) anyway I can include them!

There is one level that is from aqualems that I am not currently including the bonus pack, mainly because I revisited the puzzle on that level and I'm now much happier with the intended solution for it (and it only really shares a terrain element, the puzzle and overall level shape is very different).

I also had a go at doing a logo - spent far too long trying out different filters before finding one that looked kinda nice:

Now that's what I call a Logo, this pack gets better and better. Looking forward to the release