Christmas Lemmings

Game: Christmas Lemmings (Holiday Lemmings in North America)
Platform: PC (originally Amiga)
Developer: DMA Design (now Rockstar North)
Release Year: 1991 - 1994 (a release each holiday season)
Stephen's Rank: 5/10

Christmas Lemmings was a series of versions of the game Lemmings which were released during the holiday season. The games always had a Christmas theme. In 1991 and 1992 the games were released as demos with a few short levels. In 1993 and 1994 the games were sold in stores and contained a full compliment of levels.

Basic Plot

There is no plot but the scenario is that there are a group of suicidal lemmings who start at one point in the level and keep walking until they die or they reach the exit. Your job as the player is to keep them alive.

Gameplay

Lemmings is a puzzle game which involves interacting with and herding a group of lemmings from one side of the level to the other.

The game is divided into levels. Levels contain both destructible terrain and non-destructible objects such as steel walls. Levels also contain obstacles designed to kill your lemmings including high walls or steep drops, lava or water, and booby traps.

A player can complete a level with some losses but a certain percentage of their lemmings need to survive to complete it.

To navigate their lemmings through a level the player assigns skills to their lemmings. Skills are one-time-use and there are limited available so they must be used sparingly. The skills include:

• Bashers; lets a lemming dig horizontally across.
• Miners; lets a lemming dig diagonally down.
• Diggers; lets a lemming dig directly down.
• Builders; can create a rising staircase upwards.
• Blockers; re-direct any lemmings who contact them back the way they came.
• Bombers; continue walking for 5 seconds and then explode, taking out terrain with them.
• Climber; can climb up a vertical wall or any slope at less than 180 degrees.
• Floater; can survive falls no matter how high.

Floaters and Climbers are skills that last an entire level once given. A Floater who is given the Climber skill or vice versa becomes an "Athlete".

There are four difficulty levels; fun, tricky, taxing, and mayhem.

Positives

Excellent music. Challenging and unique gameplay.

Negatives

A little too difficult. Relentless even.

Memorable Moments

My mother LOVED the music from this game. For some context, I used to record some of the music from my favourite computer games using a microphone and an old cassette recorder. I created a series of albums I called "Computer Music" (inventive I know) and I'm pretty sure mum asked me to record the music from this game so we could play it at Christmas one year.