Description of the Lemmings Games

A Lemmings game is presented as a picture on the computer screen. The picture contains two kinds of objects besides empty space.

• solid-objects These include surfaces on which lemmings can walk, cliffs that can be climbed or from which lemmings can fall, hazards like flames or water that kill lemmings that enter them, bridges built by lemmings. Objects other than lemmings do not move, although they may be damaged by explosions.
• lemmings There are ten kinds of lemmings. Each is represented by a characteristic picture of a man about 10 pixels high.

There is a lemming source from which lemmings are emitted until the quota for the game is reached. There is a goal or lemming sink. The object of the game is to get a specified fraction of the lemmings to the goal. If the player doesn't succeed, he gets to try the game over.

All lemmings are initially emitted as walkers. Subject to certain restrictions, the player may designate any lemming as having one of the 9 qualities other than walker.

Here are the capabilities of the different kinds of lemming.

• walker Walkers walk either to the left or to the right at a steady pace on the horizontal or on moderate slopes. They cannot stand still. When a walker comes to a wall it reverses. When it comes to a cliff it falls off. If the fall is from too great a height it dies, i.e. disappears from the scene and therefore doesn't add to the score.
• climber Climbers behave like walkers, but when one reaches a wall it climbs it.
• floater Floaters behave like walkers but can safely fall from any height.
• bomber When a lemming is designated a bomber, there is a 5 second countdown, and then it explodes, removing itself and all material from a small circular neighborhood of its location. Explosions do not affect other lemmings.
• blocker When designated as a blocker, a lemming stands still until its status is changed by exploding it or otherwise changing its status. Walking lemmings are reflected from blockers. Its status cannot be changed by redesignating it.
• builder When designated a builder a lemming starts building a bridge diagonally upward in the direction it was walking. The slope is 1/2. Building continues for 12 steps or until the bridge hits something. Lemmings walking to a bridge in the same direction the bridge is being built climb the bridge. A lemming coming to the end will fall off.
• basher When a lemming comes to a wall and is designated a basher, it digs a horizontal hole.
• miner A miner is like a basher except that the hole is diagonally downward.
• digger A digger is like a basher except that the hole is vertically down.

The above description does not fully describe the behavior of lemming, e.g. how deep a hole has to get before it traps walkers. Properties like this are consequences of the lemming program, are not described in the manual and are imprecisely learned by experience.

The game file bought from Psygnosis contains a number of opportunities to play (10 in the sampler and 120 in the original full version). We call each of them a game. The games are organized into levels of increasing difficulty, but we won't use the word level that way; instead we use it in its geometrical sense. Each sequence of actions by the user and the program is called a play of the game.