This thread considers the DOS version of Lemmings 2, given that it's the only one I've played, and the only version with great editing tools.
After playing around with all of Lemmings 2's skills thanks to making my level pack Quest From Kieran 2, I have accumulated some opinions on the various skills, and wanted to talk about them. To provide some structure, and for laughs, I figured it would be fun to try and "rank" every skill into an order over how well designed I think it is. By this I am implying some worth to the skill in terms of it's reason to exist, its use as a tool for designers, and also how fun it is to play with for players. It is important to note that every single skill can be found to have some sort of use if you try hard enough, as there are minor differences even between very similar skills, but that doesn't mean I think it is justified in existing. For this, I consider a skill to be well designed using the following criteria:
- It's useful - If you've played Lemmings 2 for any length of time then you start to suspect that some skills were made because the concept sounded cool or because a fun animation was developed rather than a genuine thought that the skill might bring something to the gameplay.
- It's consistent and predictable - With a small mistake often requiring you to restart the entire level, there's nothing more annoying than a skill that either doesn't always work as you'd expect, or is hard to "eyeball" what will happen, requiring lots of trial and error.
- It's easy to execute - Most skills in Lemmings involve just clicking on a lemming and then it does its thing, but Lemmings 2 sometimes tried to allow more player control over what happens next. For some skills this works well, but for others, they use the fan.
- It's not redundant - With 51 skills, there's inevitably some cross-over. But sometimes you have to wonder why players should need to give head-space yet another skill that seems to offer basically nothing over its counterparts. Does the skill really need to exist?
- It utilises the terrain well - Lemmings is a game all about traversing and modifying the terrain, utilising your skills to take advantage of the layout. Some skills ignore all this completely, or have too many constraints on their use, and as a consequence are hard to design around, or just way too obvious in their usage, which is less fun.
- It's not a hot buggy mess - Sometimes skills could enable bugs that were very frustrating to deal with, either being horribly exploitable, or got in the way of standard use and caused annoyance.
- It doesn't use up too much sprite memory - You may not know this, but Lemmings 2 has limits on spirtes that can be used in a level. I think it's based on a combination size and number of frames, but if you go over the limit then some lemmings will just stop rendering during certain animations, which can be bad if e.g. the shrugger disappears after building. So skills with massive amounts of animation can cause problems in when they can be used.
- It's cool and/or fun - What can I say, some skills are just awesome. So if you disagree with this list, the only rational explanation is that you have bad taste.
Alright here we go!
51) Blocker - A staple in the original Lemmings game, so how sad it is to see a huge fall from grace in Lemmings 2. The reason?
IT DOESN'T WORK! This skill cannot be used in 11/12 tribes, only being usable in Classic. Shoehorning it into other tribes results in a skill that both does nothing, and also can crash the game. But that's OK, because you can use it in Classic tribe right? Well yes, but it's a huge enabler of the crawling glitch by shoving lemmings into a wall by blocking next to it and then building over the blocker. This became so impossible to design around that it's the only skill where I gave up on trying to fix related crawling exploits.
50) Twister - No skill in Lemmings 2 makes you want to rip your hair out more than this. It's so awful to control, which is a huge problem because it's ludicrously overpowered. It begs you to do precise stuff with it, and you can, but you have to deal with the worst possible interface for doing that. It's just not worth trying to do anything interesting with this skill, use literally any other destruction tool instead and save yourself a headache and a gazillion really stupid backroutes.
49) Hopper - I really hate this skill. It's so limited in its usefulness unless you set up very specific landscape in which to hop over, in which case it's super obvious where you have to use it. Trying to come up with a possibly more interesting use is just a pain execution-wise. There are enough jumping skills, this one has no need to exist.
48) Roller - Ugh. The idea is cool but it never launches off of platforms in any way that is consistent, making this really hard to use for anything other than stopping a slider from sliding. Not worth the effort of dealing with.
47) Skier - It's a slightly better version of the roller, with all the same issues but at least it a momentum thing going on that can be made to work under really specific circumstances. Almost completely worthless honestly.
46) Icarus Wings - It's SuperLem, except controlling it is significantly worse. And given that Superlem is sometimes quite hard to use, is a really bad sign for this skill. Why does it react so strongly to the fan? If a lemming sneezed next to an Icarus Winger the poor guy would end up in China.
45) Skater - So pointless. Only usable in one tribe, and while you can come up with uses for it like turning a lemming around, it really really doesn't need to exist. The worst bit about ice is that it's not even all that good of a trap, lemmings slipping on ice will move about 1 grid square every minute so eventually they usually free themselves anyway, so what an absolute joke of a skill. At least it works and isn't annoying to use, but it blatantly only exists for thematic reasons.
44) Planter - So this skill adds a lump of land, but the lemming using it will turn around if he's facing right but not if he's facing left due to the particular shape of the plant which is so dumb. It also eats up quite a bit of sprite memory. This skill ended up being a real pain to try to use for something decent. In most cases I'd rather use the sand pourer or a builder or pretty much anything else, I think this skill has no reason to exist.
43) Surfer - Do you like the swimmer? Hell yeah I do. What about the kayaker? It's OK. Well here it is again, except with pointless fanning mechanics! Great, thanks. OK, to be fair, this skill is super light on sprite memory, but so is the swimmer, so this has no real reason to exist.
42) Hang Glider - Lemmings 2 has a gazillion skills that offer extreme mobility to a single lemming. This one is particularly notable for utilising the fan but being significantly worse as a result. When used without the fan, the way it glides at a fixed angle would make it pretty good, just like how the hang glider in Neolemmix has proven to be useful. Instead, it reacts very strongly to the fan letting you go practically anywhere, and given you can detach it against any terrain makes it super powerful, so designing around it is a pain. You can go through all sorts of tiny gaps if you can use the finicky fan very carefully and the fact you can even do that but the execution is dire makes it a huge problem. A potentially cool skill ruined by the fan, boo!
41) Jet Pack - A "flying" skill with really annoying fan physics. It has the unique property of having the lemming face the same direction the entire time, which can have a niche use, and the fact that it can't fit into 8 pixel high gaps lets you limit where it can go, but these are not major points a lot of the time. This skill is just a pain to use.
40) Stomper - It's the digger, except faster, and much more willing to stop when a portion of the ground area beneath it is no longer there. So it's overall I'd say it's ever so slightly less useful than the digger. This skill has no reason at all to exist.
39) Diver - This skill is an ongoing joke of being the most pointless skill ever. It's extremely limited in its use given it just makes a pathetically tiny hop, but to it's credit sometimes a tiny hop is all you need, and as a way to cancel other skills, it's great! I think it's hilarious to use because it's so worthless, so bonus points there. It could be removed and nobody would care. The jumper fills the same niche most of the time. It's a real indictment against Lemmings 2 that this skill merely having the two properties of actually working and not being annoying to use elevates it so far from the bottom of this ranking.
38) Pole Vaulter - Where do I use the pole vaulter in this level? Oh I know, it's the spot with tons of open space. This skill eats up a ton of sprite memory and is extremely specific in the landscape it needs to work, what a pain. But it's hilarious and has one particular niche going for it, a way to separate a lemming without being able to cross tiny gaps anywhere which can sometimes fill an important niche that other skills like the jumper or diver cannot. But honestly I'm reaching here. This skill is the poster child of "this would be cool to animate" being the reason for its existence.
37) Scooper - Take the miner and then make it much worse. It's still useful because the miner is useful, but it really does a lot to make it as annoying as possible. The steps are the maximum height a lemming can walk over, so if you try to build over the scooper tunnel you run a huge risk of making it impossible to traverse which is just so annoying. Also as part of the scooping animation the lemming ends up spending a few frames in the air before the next scoop, so you have a super short window of time if you want to transition into something else, such as a basher, where you don't either immediately turn the lemming into a faller, or have a big drop right in front of his feet that causes him to fail after a few frames. In addition to all this the resultant tunnel does not play anywhere nearly as nicely with other skills as the miner does, so that's also annoying. Sometimes the steeper tunnel can be nice but honestly this is almost completely redundant.
36) Club Basher - This skill really struggles to justify its existence. It offers barely anything over the basher, it's just a basher that makes a taller hole, and is buggy. Sure, there exist a tiny number of instances where the taller hole might matter, but in reality it is not a big deal, and when you get to the end of the tunnel, often the mouth of the tunnel is still small, so the benefits of having a taller end point to the tunnel to use certain skills, it does not bear out in reality. To really make this skill bad, sometimes you can end up bashing in a way where a single pixel wall still remains where you start bashing, which is a horrible bug, or it can decide to stop bashing while still leaving an untraversable hump right in front of it. And to really put the icing on the cake, if you transition a miner into this, sometimes the hole it carves behind it leaves lemmings unable to walk up the miner tunnel due to the tiny step height in Lemmings 2.
35) Kayaker - Massively redundant over the swimmer the vast majority of the time. It also uses a ton of sprite memory and that can cause problems. But it's functional, so whatever.
34) Floater - In Lemmings 2 the fall height is enormous, and there are lots of ways to have a single lemming safely go down a hole, so who really cares about this skill anymore? It's particularly bad in the Classic tribe, where you are not allowed to raise the height beyond a screen, so having a splat-height fall is really hard to pull off a lot of the time. The parachuter has more going for it.
33) Thrower - This is just not very useful. You all know it from that official highland level where you create a big ramp out of them, well that's largely the extent of the sort of things you use it for. That and breaking long falls. The idea of throwing terrain, it sounds cool, but it just isn't useful.
32) Spearer - Slightly different to the thrower in ways that I think tip it slightly ahead of the thrower, but not willing to disclose all those uses here lest I spoil some stuff in my level pack.
31) Superlem - I know some people find this a pain to use, but personally I like it's interface, which gives it bonus points, it's way easier to use than most fan skills. However as far as the flying skills go, this one is really really powerful, actually too strong. But I can make use of it now and then. Eats up tons of sprite memory though. Largely redundant because there are so many flying skills.
30) Bazooka - This launches a projectile mostly horizontally that explodes on impact. It's not really all that great. It's easiest to use at point-blank where you then have to deal with Lemmings 2's irritating explosion flinging mechanics, so in that case you'd rather just use a flame thrower instead. Its niche of destroying landscape at a distance has its uses, but the launch angle on this is very restrictive, so in practice I preferred its similar cousin, the mortar, which I found to be more useful and more fun.
29) Laser Blaster - It is very hard to use this skill in a way that is interesting, unless you are really trying to push the boundaries of what it can be used for. I tried my hardest in my level pack to make this skill as useful as possible, but it was hard and I exhausted all of my ideas, there were not many. This skill works, but it's just not all that useful. Sometimes it fills a niche of just being easier to design around than some of the other destructive skills in the context of getting one lemming somewhere to free the crowd, but that's pretty much all it's got.
28) Parachuter - Sort of like the Floater, but gives a bit more flexibility that I think works out for this skill. Unfortunately it reacts a bit too strongly to the fan, I would have liked to see it not be able to move so fast horizontally. I guess in some ways this is like the Neolemmix hang glider, except a bit worse because you have to deal with the fan, but I think it's alright.
27) Jumper - I don't know why everyone else seems to like the jumper, I'm not a huge fan. It lets you separate a lemming while having it's manoeuvrability be localised to a small area, and that can be nice, but I don't think it's super great honestly. It's fine as a skill canceller but I think I'd just rather have a walker skill. I think this skill is flexible enough that it results in being more of a pain to design around rather than something I genuinely look to make use of. And in Lemmings 2 you can often use the shimmier as a replacement to this so I think this skill is actually quite redundant, one of a whole range of jumping skills.
26) Bomber - Having a local explosion without dealing with the exploder's 5 second timer is nice, if somewhat more limited in its use because it can only be used on solid ground. The fact that the bomber himself ends up falling straight down the middle of the hole can sometimes add an interesting twist in terms of having to deal with that. As Lemmings 2 doesn't make it clear how many lemmings are allowed to die, not having to deal with the lemming dying is actually a point in its favour. I think this is one of the rare skills in Lemmings 2 that fills a very similar role to another skill but I feel can happily co-exist alongside it, although the exploder is overall better.
25) Filler - It took me a while to decide where this skill should be ranked in this list. I have a gut feeling that it is not all that good. Filling up gaps, so what? Well in Lemmings 2 traps have an activation only 1 pixel high so this can be used to fill over them, but that's not on its own very exciting. As a building tool you struggle to get much meaningful height from this a lot of the time unless you're looking to just extend a digging skill, but there's only so many times you can get away with levels that use that trick. It can be used to get lemmings over small pits like a filler trap, but good luck assigning in a crowd and not have this fail. In reality its main use is the fact that it can move on its own to remote areas, and will change direction on slopes. That's pretty cool, but its hard to make genuine use out of that. This skill is just not all that useful in practice. You can't get over gaps with it, and struggle to get any height, not useful properties for a construction skill.
24) Sand Pourer - I think this is very similar in usefulness to the filler, which is to say, not very. It adds a bit of land right in front of you. It has obvious uses in covering up traps but is genuinely not very useful a lot of the time. It takes absolutely loads of them to do any serious construction work. In practice I found it was most useful in turning a single lemming around in the absence of a walker skill. It was cool and lucky to find the interaction with the climber skills not causing the lemming to turn around, but ultimately that's not enough to make this skill all that worthwhile as a constructive skill. I think as much as I think it's important for skills to depend on the terrain, construction skills also need to be able to stand on their own and something that just hugs the landscape and adds a tiny bit to it, it's not really doing anything for you.
23) Flame Thrower - It's a short distance horizontal digging skill. It's fine. The digging being instantaneous can be helpful, the fact it starts creating a gap at exactly step height can be annoying, but otherwise what is there to say here? Having a digging skill only go so far, sometimes that's nice, but whatever.
22) Archer - At first I thought this skill seemed like it would be a great addition, but in practice I was less impressed than I thought I'd be. There exist other skills that launch objects into terrain from a distance, and the archer has three main advantages over these; letting you pick the angle, easily sticking stuff to ceilings, and creating impassable barriers right next to you. Unfortunately there's quite the execution requirement involved, particularly with placing a vertical arrow right next to you. There's a reason why the final level of Sports in the original game is so hard, it's solely a matter of execution in pulling that trick off. As for the others, the angle can be useful, but sticking stuff into ceilings proved not so useful, if only because few skills in Lemmings 2 interact with the ceiling. But they do exist, and so this skill fills a niche. There's also the fact you can rise over small walls with this skill by firing at your feet at an angle, but it's so irritating to pull off yet needs to be designed around. I hoped this would be a solid skill, but it's merely OK.
21) Magno Booter - This is another skill that I thought would be more useful than it actually was in practice. The limits of only being able to detach when upright is probably for the best. It's a terrain based mobility skill so I had high hopes for it's usefulness but actually I found that sometimes it was hard to really do much with that, it's hard sometimes to properly influence this skill with others in a meaningful way without opening up a whole load of backroutes. It's a cool skill, you can design levels around it. It can sometimes be finicky. I might be rating it slightly higher than it deserves.
20) Roper - I have a real love-hate relationship with the roper and struggled to rank this skill. It frustrates me a lot because it seems like it should be so easy to use but it always misses where you fire it, or attaches slightly to low and lemmings can't step up over the ledge. It requires a lot of precision to use and for some reason always seems to be slightly off, I don't get it. It's useful but it's also really powerful and I think I just prefer the consistency and limitations of the other main constructive skills.
19) Exploder - So this skill has some problems in the Classic tribe whereby it doesn't actually work properly if the lemming is not standing on solid ground when he pops, but outside of the Classic tribe it works fine. One major advantage it has going for it is you can utilise all those skills that give a single lemming high mobility to dig out land in hard to reach places. Unfortunately in Lemmings 2 you're heavily discouraged from letting any lemmings die, and the timer is a bit of a pain, but it serves a pretty unique function that has its uses so that's nice. I didn't utilise this anywhere nearly enough in my pack due to my self-imposed constraints, so I think this skill deserves a closer look and is currently underutilised in Lemmings 2.
18) Digger - This skill is OK. I never found it to be all that spectacular and I think that's still the case here, but with Lemmings 2 having an enormous fall height, there are less reasons to want to dig down in normal play, and with Lemmings 2 also having awful crowd control, you want to avoid cramming a load of lemmings into tiny spaces if you can avoid it. It also does not work well with lots of other skills in Lemmings 2, which have little way to interact with thin downward shafts.
17) Mortar - This is a cool at-a-distance destructive tool that has an angle that lends itself to being useful in many more situations than the bazooka in my opinion. I think this skill is fun.
16) Magic Carpet - I quite like this flying skill compared to most of the others due to one major advantage, how detaching it strongly depends on the terrain. You need a downward ceiling slope or upwards floor slope or a corner to disconnect this guy, and that means you can limit where lemmings can detach. Sometimes you really need that level of control when designing the level. So in a way this is one of the few skills that depends heavily on ceiling terrain, filling an underutilised niche. Controlling it is not so bad too.
15) Runner - I like this skill. I know many hate the way it jumps at ledges, but I think it adds a lot of usefulness to this skill. I love the way it interacts with some other skills like the spearer and jumper, and it can be really useful for releasing a crowd and then getting one guy far enough ahead to do some last-minute preparation work that wouldn't be feasible otherwise. So I think this fills a niche and is fun but it's not like it's a super useful or fundamental addition.
14) Attractor - With the blocker out of action, and the stacker being really slow, there's another easy way to stop the crowd in Lemmings 2, and that's with this skill. Having a skill that leaves a lemming standing in place, but is easily cancellable, turns out to fill a cool and useful niche, so I'm a fan of this skill. But unfortunately in terms of crowd control it can be quite annoying because the other lemmings seem to have some randomness apply before they stop to dance, and so sometimes you can just end up having to replay levels just because someone didn't stop walking when they were supposed to. Bonus points to this skill for having unique animations and sounds for each different tribe, which is pretty cool, but it loses points for not working at all in Classic. In the end this skill is a perfect representation of Lemmings 2 as a whole, it has cool animations, but is a bit annoying.
13) Climber - I surprised myself with how often I ended up using this classic skill and it's very similar rock climber cousin when designing my own level pack. As Lemmings 2 has such exceptionally poor crowd control, it really helps to separate out lemmings from the crowd, and the old standby from the original game is still really useful for this, in large part because it depends so much on the terrain and therefore is not as exploitable as some other skills. But more than that it's so useful as a permanent skill too. One of the key things in making other skills actually useful as a puzzle element was to have one lemming do some preparation work for another lemming to come along and use some other skill, and the climber was really useful in that regard as a way to enforce that it had to be a certain lemming doing one of these tasks. Ultimately having both this and the rock climber is a bit pointless, and the rock climber is overall more useful while still filling the same niches, but sometimes it was nice to not have to worry about 45 degree overhangs and this version uses a lot less sprite memory, so it helped to have the option.
12) Basher - It's still a solid skill like it was in the original game. I find the basher staircase thing to be annoying, but the other similar skills have the same issue. Of particular annoyance is how easy it is to set up the conditions for a crawling glitch by using the Basher, which really lowers how I feel about it for Lemmings 2 as it's an almighty pain to design around. Why is it so hard to just have a destructive skill that only lets lemmings move horizontally without having to deal with all this nonsense
11) Swimmer - This skill works, and it works well, and it proved to have a fair more amount of practical use than I first thought. It's a useful puzzle tool and is simple and straightforward.
10) Ballooner - Lemmings 2 has loads of skills that give a single lemming extreme mobility. Here's another, and it uses the fan too! But despite all of these, I actually really love the ballooner and think it's a great addition. Why? This is because I personally find it easy to fan around and the physics work well, but also because as the balloon is so huge, it's easy to design around and stop the lemming from flying into certain areas without having to seal it off entirely. Mix in the fact that it can't be popped on the floor and you have more limitations that you can help it being completely overpowered. The neat combinations with skills that launch objects that can also pop the balloon is a cool added touch if admittedly a bit of a gimmicky use of this skill. Overall, probably my favourite "flying" skill.
9) Stacker - This skill is pretty decent. It's super slow as crowd control, but sometimes you can exploit that for interesting effect, and the fact that a lemming goes up with it, and keeps swapping directions, there is quite a lot of usage there. I think this skill is a fine addition to the roster. I think it's better than Neolemmix's stacker.
8) Platformer - This skill fills a pretty good niche, a construction skill that can be used anywhere with more distance than the builder but is flat and the lemming does not turn around if he collides with terrain. It would be one of the top skills if not for two issues; the bricks are slightly too tall and it is too easy to gain height and backroute stuff, and secondly it can cover 3 grid squares but only exactly, you have to place it pixel perfect, and that adds a whole layer of unnecessary precision unless you try real hard to design around it. But overall this skill is a great addition to the game.
7) Slider - Now here's a skill that's way cooler than the floater. It's heavily terrain-based and genuinely useful, and best of all it is absolutely hilarious in how it messes with the lemming's direction constantly, and often that can end up as a puzzle entirely by itself. The way it combos with the shimmier is just awesome, giving it quite a lot of flexibility. There's all sorts of stuff you can do with this skill and I think it deserves a lot more attention. I wish I'd used it more often.
6) Glue Pourer - This skill is great. It fills a number of interesting niches, a long distance horizontal construction skill that can build at a distance and be limited to only building at certain locations if needed, and also be used to cover multiple gaps at different locations. Sometimes these features are really useful, and the glue pourer is the only viable tool for the job in the entire roster, so it seriously pulls its weight. I think that being able to land directly on the builder that you have just finished building is unfortunate because it is really powerful if you can do that, so I felt you have to try to not put those skills together, which is a shame. There is some funkiness around 45 degree slopes and it's a shame that it does not turn like the filler does as it makes it very easy to create a blockade by pouring it against an upward slope, but I'll take it as it is given the unique roles this skill fills.
5) Rock Climber - The rock climber is groovy. Sure, it's super-similar to the regular old climber, but the way it climbs up 45 degree slopes is so cool, and actually really useful from a design perspective too, letting the lemming climb up a wall and then end up on a platform facing away from the wall. But let's be honest here, the whole reason why this skill exists is the fact that he dangles when he hits the ceiling and so can transition into a shimmier, and given that the shimmier is an amazingly great skill this skill is totally justified in being added to the game, if only just to make that interaction work. It's climber v2.0, and it's great.
4) Fencer - At last, a horizontal digging skill that doesn't have awful crawling exploits. Sure, this skill digs upwards slightly but the angle is so shallow that a lot of the time you can use it as a horizontal digging tool and it will make little difference. Horizontal destruction fills a fundamental role in Lemmings and given all the nonsense the other skills give I think this skill is a staple in Lemmings 2 and I wish I'd used it more often and saved myself a load of headache.
3) Shimmier - Oh my god yes I love this skill so much. It's amazing. It's such a cool mobility skill but the way it interacts with the terrain is so awesome. Utilising the ceiling is really cool, and the way it interacts with the rock climber and slider really opens up the usability of it quite substantially. I think this is defintely the best addition to Lemmings 2. It would have been so easy to limit this to just flat ceilings but the fact it can go up and down shallow slopes just helps it out so much. With the range of at-a-distance skills that Lemmings 2 adds there's a whole load that can be done with the shimmier that's really interesting I think. In a way it's like the climber, but for ceilings; the climber is good, and so is this.
2) Builder - I think everything that's ever been said about the builder still applies here. It's still extremely useful. I think there's actually a bit of a lack of generically useful constructive skills in Lemmings 2 compared to how many skills there are, so the builder continues to be just as useful as ever. It has good and sensible constraints and fills a role that is fundamental in Lemmings.
1) Miner - I wondered if this or the builder should be the best skill, but in the end the miner wins. The miner is great for so many reasons, perhaps most obviously it's a way to get the crowd to gain height, which is totally fundamental to so much in Lemmings, but with the miner it depends so heavily on the landscape which is what Lemmings is all about. It is so easy to use as a way for a single lemming to get to a location to make a path to get the crowd to the exit that only works in one direction. Its gradual slope complements a whole bunch of other skills in Lemmings 2, I won't list them all to avoid spoilers for some of my levels, but often it was the go-to destruction tool for getting other stuff to work properly. In some ways the problems the scooper has only made me appreciate more just how much the miner ends up doing it right.
I hope you enjoyed reading this.
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