I have finished the remaining 3 ranks and thus all my replays are attached, from LP1 1 through NLI 15. There's 140 levels total, but the zip file only has 138 replays due to two broken levels in the LPIII Gimmicks rank, 21 and 28. The two replays for those levels are attached in my previous post, where they are solutions but don't work since direct drop is disabled.
Feedback on Step 8: Other LPThis rank was pretty much a grab bag in terms of gimmicks, featuring the ones that have yet to appear in the pack. The only standard levels with no gimmick active were Other LP 1 -
Terrible Sky, Other LP 15 -
Remember Your Beginnings...?, and Other LP 16 -
Minesweeper. The first level wasn't too bad, although a lot happens in the first 30 seconds or so, with a lot of skill assignments. Luckily, the save requirement is very lenient. 15 is a seemingly impossible level, as it's not possible to reach the exit at the top due to the skillset, which means there must be an accessible hidden exit. Indeed, the level is over extremely quickly. It's possible to beat the level with just one skill. For the last one, I still don't understand how to play Minesweeper. Guess I never understood the rules of the game. Indeed, the exploding mine sound took me by complete surprise the first time it happened. I'm sure there's some trick to discovering which sectors are booby-trapped and which ones aren't due to the numbers, but what it is I'm not sure. Thus, the level was a completely blind guess at every moment. I ended up taking about a good 5 minutes to solve the level. Of course, this level is extremely easy in later NL versions, as you can simply activate CPM.
The rest of the levels of the rank featured various gimmicks that haven't been used yet in the pack. Other LP 2 -
Quarantined Threat uses the zombie gimmick, Other LP 3 -
Nothing Lasts Forever uses exhaustion, which I believe has already been used, Other LP 4 -
Boomballoon and Other LP 7 -
Plutonium Lemming use the larger blast radius of the bomber skill, and honestly for 4 this took me by complete surprise as I stared at my screen with an extremely big bomber hole (obviously I never caught on with the level title), Other LP 5 -
Try Anything Once and Other LP 12 -
The Sandpit both use permanent skills only last for one use, the former is the first level in the entire pack to feature preplaced climber lemmings, Other LP 6 -
Acid Leak and Other LP 9 -
Pocket of Air both use rising water at a much faster rate than the standard used in Lemmicks, Other LP 8 -
Glider Frenzy is similar to the floater frenzy levels in that pause can't be used but this time the glider skill is used instead of the floater, Other LP 10 -
Finally... is a standard karoshi level with no other gimmicks active,and finally Other LP 14 -
SUPERLEMMING III: Desert Escape combines the superlemming and rising water gimmicks.
This rank was definitely easier than the last few. None of these levels were too hard except for Other LP 7. Here, I thought it was going to be extremely fiddly due to the huge bomber radius gimmick, but it actually turns out that I simply went about the level completely wrong, where I quickly dismissed the area between the starting platform and the water as pointless too quickly. Once I realized that it did indeed have a purpose, then the level was easy. The other difficult one was Other LP 10, but that is because it is a huge time cruncher. Without it, it's a very easy level. Also, the fact that the entrance is a preassigned floater hatch took me by complete surprise, but it does make it obvious in that the only way to kill them is to make them drown. The challenge, then, is to get from the bottom to the very top of the level within the 2 minute time limit. You simply can't afford to make any mistakes or you'll run out of time. Fortunately, it's a 10-of-everything level, but resources can still be tight, especially builders. In my solution I used all the builders and had only a few seconds remaining.
Two levels deserve special mention. They are Other LP 11 -
The Midnight Bridge, which uses the clock gimmick, and Other 13 -
Traptastic, which features wrap. I do believe namida might be right about the former in that he's the only one to have made use of the gimmick in any level. Nevertheless, I actually really did attempt the level for a good 10 minutes before realizing it's impossible to solve with the given skillset. Also, I cheated, as I did a search with the level title here in the forums, where it's revealed that the clock gimmick is used. Thus, the solution is simple.
Set your clock to midnight or wait until midnight and then play the level. This is where the steel platform appears and you therefore don't have to do anything to solve the level. Thus, once you know about this gimmick, it is possibly the easiest level in the entire pack, but if you don't then you're just wasting your time with an otherwise impossible level.
Other LP 13 also deserves special mention, as it's also a seemingly impossible level until you realize what gimmick must be active. After a good 3 minutes, I deduced that wrap must be active, as it's not possible to solve the level otherwise with the skillset given. I don't think the level title hints to it other than the hidden traps in the level.
My favorite level of the rank would have to be Other LP 5. It's a very good puzzle with a really good solution
Not too difficult to work out at all, as long as you know how to get around the gimmick active in the level. Other LP 14 would have to be a close second. Despite the Superlemming gimmick, I felt very engaged with the level, as it instills a sense of urgency as you try and escape the very fast rising water as well. Thank you for not combining it with the frenzy gimmick, though! Even then, it might not be that much harder, especially since you only have 1 lemming to worry about. Nice red herring with the swimmer pickup. As a matter of fact, I don't think any solution exists that uses the pickup. I fell for the ploy and quickly realized that it's simply a trap as you won't be able to destroy all of the terrain before the water catches up.
Feedback on Step 9: DDL2These were levels from the later cancelled DDL2 pack. In addition to zombies, some of the levels featured ghosts or both zombies and ghosts. Interestingly enough, this rank was easy too, although there were still a couple of hard ones. The hardest levels in the rank for me were DDLII 12 -
Ilemminati and DDLII 13 -
The Fortress. The former took me a while to spot the solution, and it's certainly quite difficult due to the skillset. The latter was especially fiddly, so I'm wondering if there's a much better solution than the one I found. DDLII 9 -
It's A Ghastly Story and DDLII 10 -
Guardian Angels were a bit difficult as well, but I really liked these two!
Especially the latter, which was probably my favorite level of the rank. I did thought I had a working solution for the former, but unfortunately due to using a blocker to turn a builder this would end up with me being 1 short of the save requirement after the ghost mines out the crowd. This really means that the only loss you're allowed is the ghost. I struggled for a while in figuring out how I could rectify the solution. It wasn't until I realized that I have to finish the bridge from the other side with the ghost lemming. Then the solution came together. I also really liked DDLII 15 -
Lemmy and the Chocolate Factory. Very nice solution and level!
Feedback for Step 10: NLIThese were rejected levels from the very Old Formats version of the NL Introduction pack. I have already played the pack from a few months ago and given you feedback in its level pack topic, but I still ended up doing this rank just for completeness. Upon first glance with many of the levels, I remembered the gimmick it used. There were only a few that I couldn't remember, but they're easy to work out once you let the level play out. The impossible level in this rank brings you to back to LPII Gimmicks (Step 3) 12 -
Uptime for the secret level unlock. After you finish this level, it brings you to level 13 of the rank. I proceeded to play the next few levels of the Step 3 rank again, and then I stopped upon reaching level 15. At that point, I'm assuming the game will simply make you go through the levels in the pack in order again.
Overall Thoughts on This PackRegarding the first rank, yea, the only level that doesn't deserve to see the light of day again is the 7th level. Way too many split second assignments in the span of several seconds. The rest of the levels were all right, although I think I'm certainly glad that very annoying gimmicks like the one skill per lemming got culled, and hence I won't have to deal with it when I play through your other Lemmings Plus packs in New Formats. The hardest ranks for me were definitely LPII Repeats (Step 2) and LPIII Gimmicks (Step 6). The former due to some extremely fiddly levels with extreme pixel precision, in addition to super tight timers, the latter mostly due to the one skill per lemming gimmick but also because it's the largest rank in the pack at 29 levels. As mentioned before, between the two most prominent gimmicks in this rank, backwards lemmings and one skill per lemming, I grew to especially hate the latter, which was a gimmick I didn't mind when I played through Lemmicks. I think it's because there were only a few levels that had it. There was no entire rank featuring that gimmick. The former gimmick can be annoying, but it's nowhere near as annoying as the one skill per lemming gimmick. It's confusing more than anything, but it's also been a while since I played Lemmicks or any levels featuring the culled gimmicks.
As is the case with most packs currently available, this is most certainly not a pack for beginners! There's a lot of hard levels for an entire pack consisting of rejected levels. The first rank is most certainly the easiest, especially since I have already played LPI but on Dos many years ago, and hence I breezed through the entire rank in about 15-20 minutes, but because this rank does not feature any gimmicks (the entire LPI pack doesn't have gimmicks). Rank 2 LPII Repeats also doesn't have any gimmicks, but it is considerably harder than Rank 1. As I previously mentioned, the very sharp and harsh increase in difficulty going from Rank 1 to Rank 2 caught me off guard and was totally unexpected. Some of the later ranks I thought were easier, but there's still a handful of very difficult levels. Perhaps one of the easier early ranks after the first two would be Rank 5: LPIII Repeats. This is due to the first half being very easy X-of-everything levels, but after the first 7 such levels, the rank is done playing around and immediately hits you with a somewhat difficult non-X-of-everything level with a skillset that doesn't come anywhere near resembling such a level in the 8th level. The remainder of the rank stays quite difficult.
I think I would have to say it was due to Rank 2 and Rank 6 that I didn't enjoy this pack as much as I should had. I still enjoyed the pack to a certain extent, and it's true that it takes a lot in order for me to rage at levels when I'm solving, but this pack happened to be one that just frustrated me beyond anything I have ever played. So perhaps what I'm getting at is that there aren't as many levels that I think deserve to see the light of day again after having played through this entire pack. There were a handful of really good levels, but most of the other levels ended up being too frustrating for me. Yet here I am, where I endured and played through the whole pack, and I certainly blame the fact that I'm a completist, where I have plans to play all packs for very Old Formats, Old Formats, and New Formats. It should also be clear that I rather play and solve levels rather than design, though I will certainly try my hand at level making soon despite how I have said over and over that I'm no good at all. I mostly say this due to how I have always been an extremely bad artist. I'm the only person in my household who cannot draw. Of course, one doesn't do it this way when using the editor, since the pieces are already provided. Unless of course one makes new graphic sets, but aesthetics is something to still take into consideration when designing levels, though not mandatory in any way.
Still, this pack is available for anyone who wants to try their hand at it. The .nxp file I attached in my previous post is the one to download, as it does fix the two problem levels I mentioned with the game crashing with a fatal error. I'm quite surprised I managed to get all of the pack working with the FlexiTool by rebuilding the .nxp file, considering that I have never ever used it beforeThe one I had before was from Wafflem's list of levels on the NL levels board, which does have the two problem levels that don't even load properly or take you to the preview screen, as the game crashes before it happens. A working copy of the first level replaced the corrupt one, while I added the style that Step 9 level 6 needs, and hence the game no longer crashes on any level. You're welcome
Gotcha Again! is the harder of the two, although it's not a very hard level. It's mostly due to how I did the starting area, and my solution ended up being very different from Icho's and much more fiddly.
This level was actually, more recently, remade in a regular style to replace a broken-beyond-repair-by-NL-updates level in Lemmings Plus IV. The LPIV version of this level is Insane 4 "Toxic Tales".
The former [Cable Lock] is very similar to a Lemmings Plus Alpha level, so I wondered if namida looked to that for inspiration, while the latter features an extremely clever way to use the Dolly Dimple trick.
You are absolutely correct. There is also a Lemmings Plus VI level based off "Plentiful Plans", although the main solution is a bit more lenient and a Plentiful Plans-like solution is required only for the talisman. The level in question is Manic 16 "The Bottom Line".
Thanks for the info, namida!
I'll definitely look out for them when I eventually play through your other LP packs. The Omega packs are also on my to-play list eventually.