Hi,
Lemmings is wonderful and we should all play more. I'll livestream the Level of the Year 2025 nominations (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=7357.0) (download the levels (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=7452.0)) and try to solve them live. I believe that every single level will be new for me.
The first stream was on Friday, June 5, 2026. The second stream was on Sunday, 7th of June, 2026. The third stream was on Wed June 10. The fourth stream was Sunday, June 21. The fifth stream was July 1st.
https://www.twitch.tv/simonnaar
During the steams, join chat and help solve the levels. Share your ideas. Be a smarty-pants! If you already know the solution, join chat nonetheless -- merely give others a chance to sink teeth into the level. Later, you can give pointers or spoil it outright.
If you join chat and you're one of the level authors, I'll prioritize your levels.
-- Simon
Sounds great, I'll be sure to watch stream if possible.
I'll be there! ;) This is exciting! I opted out of the contest for 2025, but I'll be back to compete in 2026. :thumbsup:
I should be there too. Not working on all 3 of those days
Stream was on Friday, June 5th, starting 13:00 UTC, which is 14:00 BST (England), 15:00 CEST (Germany), and 09:00 EDT (US East Coast).
-- Simon
Great stream Simon, I solved that level the moment you ended the stream. We'll get it next time you stream! :thumbsup:
@SimonIntended for my "We Got Mad Lemmings 3 Skills!" level. Well done! :thumbsup: I submitted 3 replays for the level, with the other two slight variants of the first.
Spoiler
The details that can differ are which pillar on the far left gets dugged and the hole in the builder staircase in the middle depending on how that and the miner are placed, but those are acceptable ;)
I don't have a Twitch, but I've watched the entire attempt of my level while you were live streaming. I just happened to still be up and lying awake in bed at the time :P Think I tried creating an account at some point in the past but I gave up in frustration because it wouldn't work for me no matter what.
Gah, I forgot the stream of course !
Hopefully I wont miss the second part, now setting an alert for this thread.
Thanks! I'll post replays and bug reports after the weekend. Right, kaywhyn's We Got Mad Lemmings Skills felt completely intended, thanks for confirming.
Next stream was Sunday, June 7th, 2026 starting at the same time of day, 13:00 UTC.
Simon
Just briefly looked through the VOD and I heard you say (in response to Flopsy "you sound like geoo when the frog is getting fed in Lix") that I drew the frog. But I can't claim credit for that: NaOH drew the frog. I just added the two alternative animations. :8:()[:
Stream is over!
Simon
Was a very enjoyable stream today where we went through quite a lot of entries from most authors! :thumbsup:
Thanks! Happy to hear that you enjoyed it. Thanks for joining throughout!
I've played the 2024 edition last year, and the 2025 edition this year, and it has been good fun every single time. As Flopsy has said: I should play more often than once per year. I'll try to do it!
June 5/7 replays (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?msg=108963)
Notes for myself: Music was too loud on June 7. Microphone input was fine at −5 through −20 dBFS, i.e., −5 for excited speech, −10 for most speech, and −20 dBFS for mumbling. But music should then be around −40 dBFS, not −30 dBFS. And I should pay attention that NL gets video-captured every time after I close and reopen NL mid-stream.
-- Simon
do you mind sharing your music or where you got the music for this past stream from?
Here's the Playlist as text (https://www.lixgame.com/etc/playlist-twitch-2026-06.txt).
Most of it comes from soundtracks of 90's DOS games. Hard to say what you like the most from it. Random grab of the more unique tracks from the playlist:
Winter Time II (.xm) (https://modarchive.org/module.php?176056) (Youtube) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMeiQ1ihDME) and Buns & Guns (.it) (https://modarchive.org/module.php?189937) (Youtube) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6GHbwFy3jc), both by Firage a.k.a. Kermakastikeritari
prehistorik.a2m (Youtube) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFPaSBR-IM4) by Nula. (Linking to Youtube because I assume you don't have an AdLib player installed. If you do, hunt around the net for the tracker file.)
Dynatech Ingame (https://www.lixgame.com/etc/Dynatech%20-%20Ingame.ogg) by Holger Gehrmann
The Humans, Ingame track 3 (https://www.lixgame.com/etc/Humans%20-%20Ingame%203.mp3) by Barry Leitch
-- Simon
Third stream will be tomorrow, Wednesday, June 10th, starting 17:00 UTC. This will be 19:00 CEST, 18:00 BST, and around noon in America.
-- Simon
Wed 10 stream is over!
-- Simon
Quote from: Simon on June 10, 2026, 05:00:24 PMRecording will remain for 14 days at: https://www.twitch.tv/simonnaar
Do I have your consent to download your VODs and upload them somewhere so people can watch them after the 14 days are up?
Download the VODs as you like.
I'll have to make up my mind about rehosting. In all strictness, I play background music from random sources without permission. Unsure yet if I want that on Youtube.
-- Simon
I watched the stream and can confirm that the solution to Blues Walk With Me is perfectly intended. Very good collective by all of you there :thumbsup:
You went through all the reflexion phases I wanted to happen when making the level, including
what the heck is this button for ?, and it was a real joy to watch. Thank you for pointing out all strategies and the use of all those blues pieces I set here and there.
The only point you missed makes the execution easier :
Spoiler
if you assign climber to the 1st lemming right at the start of the level, then you can let it cycle in the button area to wait for the correct opportunity to set the blocker. Then it is easier to work on the distance between 1st and last lemming.
Guigui, thanks for the feedback!
Yeah, execution with our suboptimal way was still bearable enough that we nailed it after a few tries. I assume that, had we not solved it like that, we would have tried things similar to your spoiler.
The levels yet unsolved are 1 by Giga (Palace of Ice), 3 by kaywhyn, and 6 by Dexter. Guigui backroute-fixed his So Many Spikes, we'll see if we have time to return to that.
The next stream was Sunday, June 21.
-- Simon
Quote from: Simon on June 16, 2026, 06:33:26 PMGuigui backroute-fixed his So Many Spikes, we'll see if we have time to return to that.
This is the new version of So Many Spikes, also available in the current Save One pack.
Not sure if IchoTolot needs to bother updating the LOTY pack that close to the end of the playing phase.
Stream is over! Recording will remain for 14 days at: https://www.twitch.tv/simonnaar
We played 2 levels by Dexter, the remaining 2 by Kaywhyn, Ice Palace by Giga, and So Many Spikes by Guigui. We backrouted Kaywhyn's Oh Yes Molten Problem.
Left unsolved: 3 by Dexter, 1 by Kaywhyn (Oh No Molten Problem).
-- Simon
missed another one; I was at work, I will rewatch it.
Quote from: IchoTolot on May 24, 2026, 11:39:36 AMPlaying phase will end: June 26th 2026
But we don't care, do we? We'll stream
all the nominated levels! It doesn't matter if Icho conducts the first poll next week, we'll go through all the entries for 2025.
The next stream will be on
Wednesday, July 1, starting 17:00 UTC = 19:00 CEST.
We have 6 unsolved levels to play:
Dexter's Prologue
Dexter's Ring of Fire
Dexter's Subjugation
Dexter's Unstable Egress
kaywhyn's Oh Yes! A Hardcore Molten Problem (re-solve, kaywhyn fixed our backroute)
kaywhyn's Oh No! Another Hardcore Molten Problem
These streams have helped me back into NL and Lix. I'm happy how I've stuck to it these weeks.
-- Simon
Stream is over!
Recording will remain for 14 days at: https://www.twitch.tv/simonnaar
-- Simon
Oh Yes is close to intended that it's an acceptable solution, while Oh No is completely intended. Well done! :thumbsup:
LOL why do people insist on making my Oh Yes harder than it needs to be? :P Dexter was almost right about the leftover blocker.
Spoiler
Change to "eliminates the timing completely" and that would had been accurate. I don't require that the builder and miner meet at the exact same time at all! That's what the blocker is for, use it people! :P
Basically, after the builder turns around to the left, you simply park and make him block at a spot so that when the miner frees him after using the builder staircase to keep going, the miner tunnel's low and deep enough to turn him back towards the exit ;)
I also don't require the stacker to be the splatform. Instead, you can simply build back far enough so that the fall is no longer fatal but then you need to interrupt him with the stacker so that everyone turns towards the right and doesn't get into danger with the trap ;)
For Oh No, it's possible to do it with just two climbers, but as I haven't been shown any backroute that the third climber causes, I decided to leave it in and would take it out only if it causes backroutes ;)
Spoiler
Simply have the first climber turn around to the left first before digging. Then the rest of the solution can be done the same as before, with the platformer over the small lava pit finishing way ahead of time of the long basher from the right so that he can platform up the gap before the exit on time before the second climber arrives ;)
Yea, I envisioned a level with the repeat where the only way to rescue the crowd is to get help from the other side due to how the basher destructive mask works. Hence the result was Oh No :)
Icho simply organized all the authors' levels by ABC order. This thus creates confusion due to how Oh Yes comes after Oh No alphabetically but that the former is meant to be played before the latter because the latter is the repeat version instead of the other way.
Once again, I got the impression from your groans that you're blaming me for my designs, when in fact you should play the levels before judging. I guess I'm not used to such reactions from people who play my levels on stream, particularly since it's still more common for me to play other people's levels and hence they watch me rather than me be the viewer watching others play my levels. It is true that Oh Yes uses parts of the level that Oh No doesn't, but that is intentional :P Keep in mind that decoration is perfectly valid level design when it comes to deceiving and throwing players off guard into thinking it's integral to the solution when it actually isn't ;P I simply wanted to go beyond just the main areas for Oh Yes and Oh No in an effort to make them look nice. Dexter's tilesets are wonderful to look at and make levels with! :thumbsup: I pretty much knew from the start I wanted to use his Hoard graphic set for the Oh Yes and Oh No levels ;)
It's also amusing people are associating me with a certain level design when I really shouldn't be, as I only have 2 or 3 such levels out of the around 50 or so total I have made in the last 5 years :P
Spoiler
Levels that involve extending skills
Anyway, thank you for streaming and the nice compliments on my levels! :thumbsup: Also for the resolving of my Oh Yes after I backroute fixed it ;)
We've solved everything. Thanks everybody for joining!
I've attached replays from the stream for these levels:
A Step Down With Difficulty -- one of our solutions uses only 15 skills
Oh No! Another Hardcore Molten Problem -- kaywhyn, I'll reply tomorrow!
Oh Yes! A Hardcore Molten Problem
Prologue
Ring of Fire
Subjugation
Unstable Egress
This should ideally go with the other replay postings into Playing Phase for the 2025 levels (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=7452.0), but that's locked.
-- Simon
The alphabetical sorting is one source of confusion, but even bigger sources come from Lemmings culture itself:
Oh No More Lemmings was the first expansion by DMA.
Oh Yes Something Something are user packs, they came later.
Oh No, Not Again was a level by tseug.
Oh Yes, Here Again is a variant tseug's level by Nepster.
And your two titles are similar to these two.
Quote from: kaywhyn on July 01, 2026, 11:23:45 PMI got the impression from your groans that you're blaming me for my designs, when in fact you should play the levels before judging.
Hmm. It's a livestream, I say what comes to mind. Solving levels is hard. No worries with the grunts or the rants. Nearly everything in a level is an annoyance (in the widest sense) because it prevents me from solving the map.
Oh No/Yes came from the double-level contest, and it's up to me to guess how much terrain the routes share. I realized that late. Before, I wanted to send lemmings all across the map.
Thanks for following the streams so closely, and for you feedback!
Quote from: kaywhyn on July 01, 2026, 11:23:45 PMwhy do people insist on making my Oh Yes harder than it needs to be?
Psychological reason: If you can do something with fewer skills, it's always correct; if you spend more skills, it may need revision later. And if you drill deep into a local area, you understand it better.
Yeah, I see how you solve the timing issues completely with Dexter's leftover blocker.
geoo blames me for drilling too deep into local areas, and suggests that I broaden the search. His advice is hard to follow but probably better. At least, the drilling found some almost-backroutes (wrong ideas that almost worked) in early versions of his levels, and he was able to patch that to fail more clearly.
-- Simon
@SimonAll right, thanks for the explanation and clarification! :thumbsup:
Quote from: Simon on July 04, 2026, 12:09:49 PMOh No, Not Again was a level by tseug.
Oh Yes, Here Again is a variant tseug's level by Nepster.
I remember tseug's level, and IIRC I honestly didn't find the level that bad when I first played it in the Lemmini version of Revenge of the Lemmings all those years ago, back around 2017/2018. It is the final level in Lemmini's version, while it's close to the final level in a really early NL version. It is in some ways pretty anti-climatic to be the final level of RotL, though interestingly enough I had a lot of trouble with the level earlier this year when I played the NL version of RotL. One contributing factor is the extremely huge lapse of time since I last played and solved the level on Lemmini, almost 8 years ago. Not to mention I generally prefer to figure out and solve levels again from scratch instead of running a solving replay I might have, as I think this is great for exercising one's brain, no matter how long it's been.
At the same time, another factor would be due to Lemmini RR system working very different from NL's and hence you can't quite translate the solution the exact same way. Even then, I believe the level is slightly different on NL than on Lemmini due to changes I think mobius made. Also, it's likely I made the solution far harder than I needed to, but even nastier is the really harsh time limit. Even with the extra seconds in NL compared to the 2 minutes in Lemmini, it's still very tight.
IIRC I think it took geoo a while to solve the level? Or was it ccexplore? Will need to dig out tseug's level pack topic again.
Nepster's level I'm not aware, though that's probably because it's a Lix level and not a NL one? I myself would love to take a look at NepsterLix at some point. My biggest accomplishment was finally solving all of NepsterLems back in May 2023. Before this, I had started his NL pack sometime in 2020 while I was on my quest to conquer all of Icho's Lemmings United. I reached the former's "Thin Layers" level around September 2020 and had the level unsolved for nearly 3 years because it had stumped me very badly. During the almost 3 years the level was unsolved, I occasionally came back to the level but to no avail. Then, I finally got the level solved May 2023 and proceeded to smash through the remaining 20 levels of Nepster's pack in very short order. Hence, I finally solved all of the pack, even if it took me nearly 3 years to do so!
Anyway, it was intentional I subverted the expectation of my Oh No level being the harder of the Oh Yes/Oh No pair, because... why not? :P
QuoteHmm. It's a livestream, I say what comes to mind. Solving levels is hard. No worries with the grunts or the rants. Nearly everything in a level is an annoyance (in the widest sense) because it prevents me from solving the map.
Yea, fair enough. As I mentioned, I'm not used to hearing such groans and criticisms, if any, of my levels. Especially when they're generally very well-liked in the NL community ;)
When I LP/stream, I guess I'm just better than most at keeping calm while trying to figure out levels, even when I'm frustrated while being very stumped. I'm currently in the process of live streaming kieran millar's custom Lemmings 2 pack Quest From Kieran 2. It's very slow going due to how very difficult the levels of the pack are, but I'm enjoying it a lot! :thumbsup: You were right about the base L2 game being sufficient preparation for QFK2, even when I haven't seen many of these L2 skill interactions before and hence am learning them for the very first time through his pack!
Anyway, I should post my feedback in his L2 level pack topic soon! As of the second week of July 2026, I currently have 4 tribes completed and have almost a fifth one done! :thumbsup:
QuoteOh No/Yes came from the double-level contest, and it's up to me to guess how much terrain the routes share. I realized that late. Before, I wanted to send lemmings all across the map.
No worries. It is in a way a pretty natural inclination! I feel my levels have done their job well of being the hard levels they're supposed to be, given that you needed to join heads with those present in chat from time to time ;) I would love to be present during your LOTY streams, but during these last few weeks while trying to sign up for Twitch I now remember why I gave up trying to sign up for a Twitch account all those years ago. Somebody apparently has a Twitch account with my username kaywhyn, and I honestly am not willing to even add anything extra to it to make an account. This recently happened to me recently at the very end of last year, where after nearly 20 years I needed to change my username for my banking account because the one I used for a really long time got locked and that I'm not able to just change my password. Needless to say, I was very upset.
So, I'll just have to be content with giving feedback after your streams! ;) Also, I prefer YouTube over Twitch anyway despite many annoyances/bugs of the former in more recent times :P
Quotegeoo blames me for drilling too deep into local areas, and suggests that I broaden the search. His advice is hard to follow but probably better. At least, the drilling found some almost-backroutes (wrong ideas that almost worked) in early versions of his levels, and he was able to patch that to fail more clearly.
I too would also love to take a look at geoo's Lix pack at some point as well! ;) I am worried that the difficulty might be too much for me. Then again, I find geoo's levels very hard in general. Nevertheless, I'm willing to face Lemmings/Lix levels of any difficulty head on! :thumbsup: