A lot of forum members seem to be fans of 1-of-everything levels. So am I!
3 of everything is also nice, 5 is still fine.
But above that, usually starting with the archetypical "10-of-every-classic-skill level", I just found levels become exponentially less interesting.
The main reason is one that has otherwise been mentioned frequently as a positive of the classic eight skills:
The standad eight skills in combination are simply too powerful to work in tandem like that! Keep in mind, they were designed to be everything you could choose from in original Lemmings - so the skill panel overall had to have this versatility - and then, a lot of levels were determined by which skills you
didn't have, or weren't allowed to use. The most prominent case of this happening in original Lemmings is probably at the end of Tricky / early Taxing, where suddenly you can't really trap the crowd with blockers anymore and have to come up with more creative solutions.
Or sometimes, you have to go down without having any miners or diggers, or go up without having any builders. These are the kinds of
restrictions that make levels interesting!
However, if you really have 10 of every classic skill, even if you have to save everyone and therefore cannot use bombers, it's still easy to trap the crowd with blockers and just free those with miners or bashers, sometimes diggers at the end. The classic skill panel is a Swiss army knife, and if it's packed with 10 of every skill, you pretty much have a solution for any obstacle you can encounter.
In contrast,
a level featuring 10 of every NeoLemmix skill (you'd have to exclude one, since there are nine of them, obviously) is much more restrictive, mainly because the only destructive skill is the fencer, so going down is a problem - and the platformer doesn't gain height, so going up is a problem as well.
I do think though that there are a couple of steps you can take to make your "10-of-everything levels" more interesting;
I believe part of the problem is how these levels are created:
Usually, they feature a wide landscape of terrain which is pretty time-consuming to create for a level designer. You end up with a level that looks very pretty, but after having put in all this work creating the terrain, you often do not have the energy anymore to come up with a specific solution. So you just provide 10 of everything and let the players figure it out for themselves.
Unfortunately, navigating through such huge levels is similarly time-consuming for the player, but also not very rewarding on top of that. Because in 90% of the cases, a bit of good judgement and resource preservation (like digging into the ground once and then getting rid of several obstacles with one basher rather than with several ones) are enough to solve those levels.
You don't get that "triumphant" feeling of having cracked a specific code to solve this level, because there's nothing specific to be done here.
Of course, there are exceptions, where a level seems like an X-of-everything level, but actually most of the skills are accounted for, like Nepster's "
Final frustration". But the majority of these levels are obviously easier, and therefore their solutions are more generic
.
So here are my suggestions on how to approach X-of-everything instead:- Try a smaller X; 1-of-everything is very restrcitive and thereby most rewarding; 3 or 5-of-everything also still work if 1 is too tight for your level size
- Does your level have at least X gaps? This binds all the builders to certain spots where they have to be used, making it more of a challenge to overcome the remaining types of obstacles, like traps or walls.
- Does your level have at least X walls that go up all the way to the ceiling? This means they can't be built or climbed over and at least 1 destructive skill has to be used here (even if you end up building towards or climbing into that tunnel eventually).
- Is one specific skill provided in much lower quantities than the rest (for example, 10 of everything, but only 1 builder)? This is like the corner stone of a puzzle, the player has to start with thinking about where this one skill goes before worrying about the rest. The downside to this is that it puts all the attention on this one skill, so usually, the spot where it has to be placed can be identified pretty quickly, and then the rest of the level is just rather generic again.
- Is one specific skill missing from the panel entirely? For example, if the lemmings have to move horizontally a lot, cut the bashers; if they have to move upwards, remove the builders. If crowd control is too plain and simple, remove the blockers; and if you have to save everyone, consider throwing out the bombers for something else, because they don't really have much "red herring" potential in that case anyway.
- Speaking of something else: Swap out one or two of the classic eight skills for a NeoLemmix skill. It can make a huge difference if e.g. the platformer takes the slot of the builder in an otherwise classic "10-of-every-classic skill" level, because gaining height is much more difficult know. Same with swapping the fencer for miners and diggers, stackers for blockers, etc.
This goes back to the
"bias for classic skills" issue, where the new skills receive less attention anyway because people are just more used to thinking and planning with the classic eight skills. While those classic skills have certainly earned their fame, their abundance in 10/15/20-of-everything levels can actually break a level easily. For that purpose, it's actually good to have skills which are objectively less versatile, and thereby less powerful.
For example, a swimmer can be seen as a floater that can only fall safely at very specific spots (=where there is water).
If nothing else works, try the following:
Provide yourself with 10/15/20 of every skill while testing, and freely explore the level as the player would otherwise have to. But rather than solving the level like someone playing on Fun difficulty...
- ...look for the fastest and most efficient solution, i.e. the one that requires the least number of skills possible.
- ...try to use skills evenly to get past obstacles, rather than simply using builders for everything just because you can !
- ...if you see an opportunity in the landscape that allows for controlling the crowd without using blockers, use it!
- ...write down or memorise which skills you used in which quantities.
- ...and then - guess what? - you remove all the remaining ones!
Now, what started as an open-ended, generic X-of-everything level does in fact have a very specific solution - the one that you found - and the player pretty much has to get into your mind to find it as well. Kind of like with every other, more restricted puzzle
.
And that, in my view, is the main purpose of being a level designer:
Figuring out any solution that works is the player's job. (This includes backroutes, solved is solved, no matter how.)
But figuring out an intended solution is your job. Do not delegate this task to the player!