Most annoying Lemmings level to you (any game)?

[Monkineer]

What's a level that you DESPISE? A level that took longer than you anticipated? A level you never want to play again?
This can count for any Lemming game.

I will admit mine, and I'm NOT afraid to admit it. I am embarrassed though.
It would have to go to Level 13 of Lemmings 1, A.K.A "We all fall down". I've spent WAY too much time on this dumb level. It doesn't make much sense IMO. I literally had to replay this level over 5+ times. all would go through the portal, and one would always fall to its doom. What sucks is that you have to get 100% of the lemmings through the exit. so having around 98% ain't gonna cut it.
And I'd ALWAYS forget to press "digger", so when I click on it, it wouldn't even apply the job to the . 
this is my fault though..

Yeah...

What Lemming level do YOU hate the most? this can apply to any game.

[NieSch]

I remember disliking Corkscrew Digger from 3D Lemmings. It's not that bad but it's a bit boring doing the same thing over and over again.

[Ron_Stard]

"Take Up Archery", from Lemmings 2, is the hardest and most annoying level of all the saga. I'm sure most players would agree with me

[Strato Incendus]

Ah yeah, I was struggling to come up with one single level as an answer, but thanks for reminding me of "Take up archery" . In terms of the original levels from Lemmings 1 and its extra levels, I'd probably say "I am A.T.", though "Private room available" is a close second.

[LemSteven]

Interesting topic!  I can think of several different ways that a level can become annoying.  Examples include too much bomber timing ("Look Before You Leap"), tough execution ("Take up Archery" and "Save Me") and dull repetitiveness ("Hunt the Nessy" and L3D's "Snake").  It all depends on which of these annoyances you consider to be the worst.

For me, the #1 turn-off that makes me not want to play a level is the overuse of traps, especially hidden traps.  Nothing annoys me more than thinking I've got a working solution, only to have a hidden trap suddenly start squashing my Lemmings.  The worst offender I can think of is "Where Lemmings Dare", which is my most hated level from the original games.  Even though most of the traps there technically aren't hidden, several of them do blend in with the terrain, plus they're not easy to avoid.

A dishonorable mention goes to the hidden icicle trap in "Tubular Lemmings".  Fortunately, the presence of a "ceiling route" that circumvents the trap entirely brings that level down a notch in the annoyance category.

[namida]

Most of the levels that I'd describe this way, fall into one of two categories - bomber timing, or builderfests. (Or bomber-timing builderfests, like Mayhem 19...)

[mobius]

I believe Simon wins title for creator of most annoying level ever:

To be fair, while I don't know the story behind this one I'm guessing this was either a joke or designed as an example of exactly how *not* to design a fun level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOH8y8xTxcw

out of curiosity; has anyone ever solved this level?

[Simon]

Immediately Give Up, yes, it's by me, and I discorage everybody from trying.

ccexplore can fan ballooners with inhuman precision and has eternal patience. He found the min-skill solution to Lemmings 2 Space 5, The Stainless Steel Lemm, where you had to balloon and fan, rope in-between the fanning, and then immediately go back to fanning and blowing the ballooner down further.

I wanted to research the limits of ccx's godly skill, and built Immediately Give Up. IIRC, ccx solved it, and nobody else.

By now, Immediately Give Up has brought cultural damage, not merely research knowledge: Kieran found it and seriously attempted it. Others might also try. Therefore I warn:

Don't play it. The sense of this is: Don't consider yourself a bad player if you don't solve it. Hint for playing because some people heed no warnings: While fanning, pause with the P key, then you keep the option to unpause with the spacebar to have the fan immediately at max speed.

If you build similar levels for some reason, at least don't let them run wild without warnings, like you would with normal packs. These levels will propagate into normal level culture. People will find your level and seriously attempt it, but it only brings rage and sorrow. Also you won't look good as a designer. Hint: Put the obvious first skill in the first slot, so the engine selects it automatically on every of the tedious restarts.

-- Simon

[geoo]

ccexplore solved this level first try, even:

Ok, that was much easier than it looks.  Not only did I solve it, but I solved it on my first try without any restarts.  I might even consider re-attempting it with the climbers replaced with rock climbers and see what happens (though that might perhaps be a bit of a stretch).

Source thread: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=990.msg33523#msg33523

Then he went ahead to do it again to record his solution. I uploaded ccexplore's solution to Immediately Give Up: https://youtu.be/aWc24wjp0go

Admittedly, at least the level doesn't have narrow chutes to go down in.



To get back on topic, I hate levels that make you redo a lot of stuff over and over again if you mess something up.
Without savestates, this applies to pretty much all long builder fests, like a good portion of L1. With savestates etc, this is much more limited, but you might still have levels where you need to get an early skill placement/timing right, but you'll only know whether it's right much later after having done a bunch of other stuff. But more generally, I also find long levels with a lot of obvious skill placements boring.

Hidden traps are an obvious annoyance, but what is worse is invisible/hidden terrain that is required in a solution, because that you do not necessarily encounter sooner or later. Case in point is Lacktardo's "Derangement of Science", a level with a simple skillset that I initially was in awe of as I spend hours on it without finding the solution, even though it seemed so simple. Turns out that it had terrain hidden behind the hatch that you needed to use. So all these hours I spent I basically wasted. It'd be a decent level if it was honest, but due to that I guess this is the one level I despise. (This was before clear physics mode and the like.)

[Ste Woz Ere]

Probably some of the bigger L3 levels, mainly because the engine itself is so annoying.  For L1 it would be something like Save Me (super tiny ledge drops) and for L2 it would be Evolution of Lemmings. (the last thing you want to do with a jetpack is get it up through a tiny hole)

"Take Up Archery", from Lemmings 2, is the hardest and most annoying level of all the saga. I'm sure most players would agree with me

For me, there was actually a 7-year gap between first playing L2 and finishing L2, thanks to this level. However, I found it much easier to repeat when I played it through 20 years later (mainly because I can fire vertical arrows reliably and remembered the right spot to throw 2 spears from). Definitely a nightmare first time around, but I think the 9th Cavelem level has the hardest execution trick in the game. (see above)

[AdrianR1983]

I've just recently completed the Acorn Archimedes version of Lemmings on emulator - all 120 levels. The level that gave me the most problems was Triple Trouble.

[WillLem]

I've just recently completed the Acorn Archimedes version of Lemmings on emulator - all 120 levels. The level that gave me the most problems was Triple Trouble.

A notorious level on most platforms.

Spoiler

Does the Acorn version have the same "doesn't quite connect" problem with the builder on the left side (i.e. this is an issue with Amiga/DOS versions)?

[mobius]

nobody has mentioned "How Do We Get Up There" from Lemmings Revolution:

The worst kind of annoying; the devs took a concept that seems good on paper, or at least has potential then ruined it.

Sadly the ridiculous time limit completely ruins what would otherwise be a good level. What makes this level so hard is not only the time limit but with time limit removed altogether, I argue it would still be decent challenge. It looks pretty straight forward but turns out more complex than it at first seems, getting multiple worker lemmings where you need to go, a lack of skills and saving 100% isn't trivial by any means. I remember, back in the day being stumped on this level for a while before figuring out the proper route... BEFORE even realizing the problem of the time limit.

It's different imo, when there's a level that's just trash from the start like "All or nothing" I just skip those entirely. Since I have no obsessions about completing games this doesn't bother me. But a level that could've been fun that turns out terrible gets me raging.

Colorful Arty solving said level:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdAT0NJ4lE&list=PLQHiUcBinBlDbPIK2dQXxMsJzWUBzfQAM&index=6

[Adrian060756]

>:(For me it has always been level 30 of Mayhem on the Mega Drive port of Lemmings. ''Lemmings' Ark'' it was one of those rusted brick and pipe tilesets with the arrows pointing left. I can get through every other level in this port without even having to work them out on account of playing the game so many times over 30 years but for some reason, this is the only level that I have to keep looking up the solution online or watch a recorded old re-run that I did of it in order to jog my memory. Definitely the hardest and most annoying level in that port of the original game.

[Dullstar]

We All Fall Down.

The solution is of course trivial, having been designed for the original game as an extreme example of a level where doing the solution is where the difficulty comes from rather than figuring it out. But from that regard, really only the Mayhem and maybe the Taxing versions are "interesting" in the sense that they may require a slightly different solution just to be reasonably completable, although NL framestepping tools show that the level DOES actually have enough space to do the trivial solution, if you can somehow pull it off without those player assists. And ultimately the thing that you have to do to be able to pass it isn't very interesting; it's just finicky because it's easy to have to start over because of a single very slightly mistimed input.