I'll give it a go.

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A level where you have no builders to use as a skill .

No destructive skills sounds like an interesting idea especially if you don’t have any blockers either, and containment has to be done by using builders creatively or something.

A level that is one-screen (where you can't scroll left or right).

No floaters and high attitude areas need to be descended with clever destructive skill use (or not).

A one in each rank level but each solution uses the terrain in an excepted way each time (where something that's used for decoration is suddenly used for a solution in a later rank).

A level where you have to literally think outside the box and go outside the established boundaries of the level to solve it.

A level where the stacker skill is used to make a staircase (don't know if that's possible).

So I have decided to try my hand at making my very first topic .

What makes a level challenging?

A quick note: I am a firm believer that you don’t have to create a hard level in order for that level to be a good level. Still, I was curious to see the science behind making a level a worthy "speedbump".

One thing I noticed in some levels considered to be challenging is that a terrain is presented to you and you have very limited skills to use in it. I really like these levels because it forces you to really think about the skills you have, how to use them, where to use them, and sometimes how to combine them. In some areas it may look like you have to use a miner to clear a path, but what if another skill would work better so the miner can be used somewhere else? What if instead of bashing you can maybe dig up the path with a digger and use the basher for other parts of the terrain?

For example, in Postcard From Lemmingland you only get one builder, which means that you can’t easily build over the small wall and pit in the level. You have to focus on what you have instead of what you don’t have, so examining how the terrain looks and using what you have to craft a solution through it is where the challenge comes in. You can bash to the pit from the entrance, so how does that help? (In fact, you can beat this level without using the basher). A miner digs down diagonally, so how does that help? Lemmings turn around when they hit a wall even while building, so how does that help? To successfully beat the level all of these things have to be considered. Another example is The Great Lemming Caper. You only had two builders and builders are the only way to reach the exit, but they were not enough for both lemmings in the level. But what else did you have? You did have a lot of diggers, bashers, and miners. How can the digger, miner, basher, and even blocker skills help out so I can use those two builders wisely? Of course, that’s why No Added Colours Or Lemmings is considered by many people to be one of the best levels in the game. The game never told you that a lemming was automatically doomed if they were turned into a blocker, so using all of your skills wisely to reach the exit and save every lemming was the challenge.

Finally, I also think this is why Save Me is more challenging than Rendezvous At The Mountain. For Rendezvous At The Mountain you had a good amount of each skill to craft a solution. Save Me did not have a lot of different skills, and even the builders run out quickly. You also had the challenge of being forced to send more than one lemming to do work on different parts of the level, so that already puts a challenge in making sure you use every skill in a way as to effectively control the crowd enough to prevent too many of them from getting killed along the way.

Anyway, that’s my two cents on the subject manner. I might even be wrong.

Thank you everyone for your kind replies! I'm glad I wasn't the only one and that the party never ends .

It's cool Proxima that some of your drawn levels became good levels today. Sadly, a lot of mine wouldn't make good levels to play today because some of them were either too tedious or too simple, although if I still had those old notebooks I'm sure a lot of them might make decent first difficulty levels .

It's funny Raymanni how your skill idea became an actual skill in NeoLemmix! I haven't played around with the new skills too much yet, but I have used them in the NeoLemmix Introduction Pack. So far it seems like the Stoner and some of the other new ones can definitely be used to make some really good puzzle levels.

Hello everybody!

I was really excited to find a community that loves the Lemmings series as much as I do My experience with Lemmings is actually a funny story. My first experience with Lemmings was a Lemmings 3D demo and I loved it (when I got older I was able to get the full version and beat every level). After that I played the Original Lemmings and found it strange that there was no turner skill available (I was little ). After that was Oh No! More Lemmings, Lemmings 2, and Lemmings Revolution, although once again I was unable to beat them fully until I got older.

I haven't played in a very long time and decided to get back into it. I downloaded the NeoLemmix player and editor and so far I love it, especially making my own levels (which is a huge dream come true, I remember filling notebooks with drawings of level ideas with skillsets, timelimts, and everything when I was little, but I'm sure lots of people here can relate to that ). I saw that a lot of people have made entire level packs and I decided to try one of them. I know I'm very, very late to the game, but I started with Lemmings Plus I.

Looking forward to participating in this forum! Have a good day.