I'm having somewhat of a hard time assessing the difficulty of the user-created packs relative to each other.

Packs I've solved so far:
- Lemmings Migration
- SubLems
- Snack Pack
- Yung Gotenk's pack & The Hell Pack

I guess CasuaLemmings is somewhere in between; I could solve a majority of the levels, but there always happened to be random ones in between which totally stumped me .

A Master Degree in Lemmings has me stuck at the last rank, where many levels are massive builder fests.

With SEB Lems, I got stuck somewhere in the middle of rank 3.

With the majority of the Lemmings Plus Series, it's a sudden jump for me, from 10-of-everything-any-way-you-want levels to "WTF"?

And I don't really know where to start, because as I especially noticed with the newly released Integral Lemmings, there seem to be whole subtypes of level solving approaches that I simply can't actively look for in a level's landscape. (It's a bit like "if you don't know that Nuke solutions are a thing, you don't even consider it" - just with more obscure things than the Nuke .)

So, any suggestions on what might be the next step up?

Yes, it should work in the newer old-formats versions like V10 and most likely even in V1.47. But almost certainly not in V1.43.
However I still encourage everyone to move to the new-formats version.

That's not even possible yet for Lemmings World Tour, because not all graphic sets have been converted yet, and I used pretty much all of them .

@Crane: That's precisely what I've done in LWT with every trick I know of .

So, when I just started my PC, Avira notified me that it had put the New Formats Editor into the quarantine because of "suspicious patterns".

I just tried redownloading the Editor, and it got put into quarantine right away. I had no opportunity to instruct Avira to make exceptions or similar, and when I say "show details", this only starts a quick scan with Luke Filewalker, rather than telling me anything specific about why the editor was removed.

Since namida is using Avira as well, as far as I know, has anyone else had this issue?

I just noticed there are some immediate turn-offs for me when facing a new level, and I wanted to ask what these are for you .

Things that make me reluctant to play a level are:

• first of all: a generic title . This just gives me the impression that the creator merely created something random without putting much effort into it. Sometimes you get surprised and a generically-titled level has a great solution. But I mainly encounter generic titles on the lower ranks, where these really just feel like filler levels.
• or a title that makes some obscure reference to something very niche, where chances of other people getting the reference are very low, compared to e.g. a pop culture reference. I make some of these occasionally, too - and with growing individualism in society, there's probably going to be less and less common knowledge to allude to in this regard . But there's a difference whether a pack is full of e.g. references to movies, songs, or well-known places - or just to, say, some random anime game instead . Too many "insider references" in level titles to me feel like repeated attempts at cracking jokes which nobody else understands.
• if the level is a no-brainer 10-of-everything level which just takes up unnecessary time to click through - rather than a challenge arising from skill restriction
• a level with a really repetitive solution, i.e. that requires 30+ of one and the same skill
• on a similar note: fiddly crowd-control where you have to keep spamming builders, or just a lot of the same skill in general, to stall lemmings until certain tasks have been completed
• levels with an unnecessarily "unergonomic" terrain shape: If you constantly need additional builders just to cross a couple more pixels, rather than the gaps being measured out for a specific number of builders; or if you have to build close to oddly shaped ceilings where the lemming is constantly turning around and coming back just to add a couple more bricks, etc.
• and another related issue is what I would call "relative pixel precision": Pixel precision is fine as long as it affects single lemmings. If a builder has to go in one specific spot, e.g. to cross a gap, allow a climber to still climb up out of said gap from the other side, and make the builder turn around or not, then fine, that's what framestepping is for! The problem arises when two or more lemmings have to be in very specific spots relative to each other, so the skill assignment becomes a game of Mikado. Pixel precision therefore becomes exponentially worse the more lemmings are required for a given maneuvre. But it's also annoying enough if just a couple of pixels decide whether a lemming slips by or not, harking back to the stalling issue.

A lot of packs I've started playing recently seem to go "no-brainer, no-brainer, no-brainer, WHAAAT?!", starting with lots of back-to-back 10-of-everything levels before stumping you right away with the first actual puzzle that shows up.

I'm exaggerating a little here, but putting lots of pointless any-way-you-want-it 10-of-everything levels first, basically creating an entire rank worth of filler levels, and starting out with actual puzzles only from rank two onward or so, is the best way of creating a sudden difficulty spike - which is usually unwanted. Think of ONML, where the entirety of the Tame rank is "whatever you want", and then Dolly Dimple (Crazy 02) just catches you off-guard.

As the Tame rank clearly demonstrates for me, these early X-of-everything levels without a tight skill restriction teach the player jack sh*t. Resource conservation, or the necessity for it in the first place, in my opinion is best taught through puzzles where the most required skills are heavily restricted or even completely absent, so you need to come up with a more creative, different approach to achieve the same goal. Once acquired this way, these skill conservation tactics can then be applied later on to levels with a larger skillset, but where still all the skills are accounted for.

Levels with an abundance of skills rarely feel rewarding to me, because whenever I solve one of these it feels like I couldn't really fail on that level to begin with. But I've talked about that sufficiently in my "case against X-of-everything levels" already .

I just saw a bit of Flopsy's LPs of Wafflem's "LemmingBytes" and "Wafflems". Are those packs still to be found anywhere? I can't see them, neither in the New Formats- nor the Old Formats subthread. That's a shame, they look like a lot of fun!

The developers of the trading card game Magic: The Gathering use the term "design space", referring to "how much can you do with the different card types (without completely breaking the game)?" Perhaps this concept exists in game development on a general level already; anyways, I think it's also applicable to Lemmings.

In our case, it can be broken down into two sub-sectors:
1) How much can you do with this graphic set (=terrain and objects)?
2) How much can you do with this skill?

A) Graphic set design space
Have you ever consciously noticed how the first step of picking a graphic set already influences what the level will look like? And I do not mean the mere aesthetics (that's kind of a "well, duh" point ), but the physics that are actually game relevant from a mechanical standpoint:

Some graphic sets are very block-ish and regular, thereby lending themselves well to e.g. climber stuff - Marble, Crystal, Fire, and Pillar come to mind from original Lemmings, Brick from ONML, and pretty much all of the Lemmings 2 graphic sets.

In other tilesets, in contrast, it is hard to even find such a climber-friendly piece of terrain in the first place: Dirt from original Lemmings is one of the worst in this regard, Rock at least has the gems which are straight walls, and Bubble has a lot of walls that look like climbers could go up there, but they actually have tiny gaps in between that prevent this. More often than not, you'll have to insert a steel piece, pretty much giving away at this point that you're supposed to use a climber here.

Finally, there is the limitation of the Lemmings 2 graphic sets:
I've been thinking a lot about why I don't like Lemmings 2 as much as original Lemmings or ONML, and surprise - it's not actually the multitude of skills. In fact, considering how many different skills were added to NeoLemmix and Lix, few of which are actually overlapping, and people are still considering adding more, it almost seems like one can never have enough different skills available (no one is forced to use them all for level design, after all).

The main issue is the shape of the terrain:
1) The levels often consist of many thin platforms of squared or rectangular blocks.
2) Many feature vertical scrolling.
3) The combination of 1) and 2) leads to a look that is more reminiscent of jump and run games like Sonic or Speedy Eggbert (not so much Mario, btw!), i.e. such that include lots of up and down-movement, rather than a Lemmings game, since up to then, these only featured horizontal camera movement.
4) The execution difficulty in Lemmings 2 wouldn't be nearly as horrible if the terrain were shaped more like in traditional Lemmings levels; however, due to this jump-and-run game level design, oftentimes the execution-heavy skills are the only available option to even make it past all the obstacles in a level. (This is probably also a reason for the increased splat height in Lemmings 2.) Try solving pretty much any Lemmings 2 level with classic skills only and 90% of them would turn into builder fests.
5) The levels look pretty "ugly" and unmemorable as a result, compared to the more landscape-like levels from original Lemmings, ONML, or Lemmings 3D.

The latter point is also the main downfall of Lemmings Revolution to me, which theoretically should be perfect for lovers of original Lemmings, but the different tilesets just look way too similar - literally like they're all "carved from the same wood" . I'd rather play Team 17's remake of original Lemmings, for that matter.

Hence, when designing a new graphic set - or, even before that, considering whether a specific new graphic set is actually needed - it may be worth asking yourself:
1) How much does this graphic set contribute mechanically?
2) How much does this graphic set contribute from an aesthetic standpoint?

For example, we have several snow- or castle-themed graphic sets, but mechanic-wise, they're not actually that different. The food graphic set, in contrast, stands pretty much on its own, and is different enough from the candy set while at the same time providing some interesting synergies with it. Also, there are comparatively many graphic sets that feature water, fire, and triggered traps, but only few contain dedicated one-use traps, splitters, or teleporters.

The Lab graphic set is very block-ish, and therefore it's hard to create interesting looking level shapes with it - in contrast to graphic sets consisting of more distinct, irregular shapes, like Purple or Tree (considering both namida's originals as well as GigaLem's remakes here).





B) Skill design space
Kieran already did an overview of all the Lemmings 2 skills and ranked them all individually, according to usefulness and how much each of them can justify its existence.
I'm going to take a slightly different approach and sort them into categories or niches that they might actually fill, related to the currently existing NeoLemmix / Lix skills.


Redundant:
These skills do basically exactly the same thing as some other already existing skill - which is why I can usually just fill these existing skills in behind a = sign .

Attractor (=Blocker)
L2 Bomber (some uses with knockback behaviour and tumbler physics in Lix, but for NeoLemmix, it would just be non-lethal, and that's all the difference)
Club Basher (=Basher)
Diver (=Jumper)
L2 Fencer (=Basher with a slight angle)
Flame Thrower (=a non-lethal bomber, but the Lemming still has to be close to the terrain it wants to alter)
Hang Glider / Magic Carpet (=Glider)
Hopper (=Jumper)
Paraglider (=Floater or Glider, depending on context, but only either of the two without the fan)
Roller
Scooper (=Miner, given that it literally replaces the Miner in Lix; just a different angle, nothing else)
Skater (=ice objects do not exist yet)
Skier
Stomper (=Digger)



Corner-cases:
These skills are slight variations of what we already have - minor differences that can however become crucial in certain situations and thereby create interesting puzzles. Still, some of these can be grouped together - these are separated with a slash - and therefore, if any of them should be introduced in the future, it should only be one of each of these groups; for example, a temporary swimmer could either be called kayaker or surfer, but there certainly wouldn't be a need for both.

Archer / Spearer / Thrower
A non-lethal stoner with range, basically: It can stop Lemmings, break their falls, and build small bridges. There's even a nice trick with them, where you shoot up in the air and then have to keep the archer lemming busy to prevent him from slipping by his own dropping arrow - similarly to the stacker.

Ballooner
Here we have potential for a one-use climber (see below).

Bazooker / Mortar
And this is the non-lethal bomber with range. Even the holes it creates look similar to the bomber.

Filler / Glue-Pourer / Sand-Pourer
Only slightly different in nature: The shape the sand pourer creates remains constant, always resulting in a little ramp which can be used in a similar fashion as a builder. The filler is just a weaker version of the glue-pourer: Both will fill up small gaps, but the filler is completely useless on flat terrain, whereas flat terrain amplifies the glue-pourer by turning it into a platformer.
Of these three, the glue-pourer probably would have the most amount of remaining design space: The only currently available option to fill small gaps without resorting to standard builders is using a stoner / cuber, always resulting in the death of a lemming.
Most of the time however, the platformer as it currently exists in NeoLemmix and Lix (the latter one also being able to cover up trap triggers on flat ground, like in L2), gets the job of the glue-pourer done just fine.

Kayaker / Surfer
A temporary Swimmer, I emulated this one in my 1.43 pack "Lemmicks" using the "non-permanent skills" gimmick.
If one were to ever introduce a Kayaker into NeoLemmix or Lix, it would beg the question why one shouldn't also create such "temporary" equivalents of the other athletic skills - meaning: a climber that can only go over a single wall before becoming a walker again, floaters / gliders that are only save for one drop, a disarmer that can only disarm a single trap.
Especially the latter one might be worth considering, because the main reason the disarmer is getting little "stage time" at the moment is probably the fact that it is over-powered, at least if traps are supposed to be the main hinderance of a level.

Planter
Kieran's main criticism of this skill was its inconsistent behaviour: The plant animation always looks the same, and since its shape is irregular, it can be walked over from the right, but not from the left. If this behaviour were regular, i.e. going along with the direction the lemming is facing, this could be used to create one-way walls - a creative equivalent to the destructive fencer, which can create tunnels only passable in one direction. It would fill the niche between fencer and stacker, so to say - because fencing through a stacker doesn't actually result in the creation of such a one-way wall.

Pole Vaulter
There is one type of obstacle none of the current skills can overcome - and it actually relates back to graphic sets such as Dirt, which often have protruding pieces. Yet, this type of obstacle is very common in levels, and it should be - otherwise, most levels would look as block-ish and generic as those from Lemmings 2:
A high wall with a protuding piece at the top and/or an irregular shape.
Climbers can't go up, Builders need to take a huge detour around such walls, Gliders require updrafts, thereby clearly giving away "use a glider here". The only way to get around such an obstacle from the crowd's side is the fencer. But oftentimes, you want to send a pioneer lemming ahead who later on frees the crowd from the other side. The pole vaulter could do this, without having to shape the terrain in a straight form that immediately screams at you "use a climber here".

Runner
While I personally just consider this skill the epitome of an invitation to execution-based madness, I have come to accept that crowd control or the lack thereof, with one lemming having to get ahead of the crowd to do stuff in time, is actually considered part of the "puzzle" by a major part of the community. (Basically, if one has to fiddle around with pixel-precision for the lemming to finish its job before the arrival of the crowd, it may just be fiddle-y because it's a backroute .) The runner can get ahead, move faster, and also make greater jumps in combination with the jumper. Now, if it were also bashing / mining / digging / building / platforming / disarming faster, including faster movement while being a climber, floater, glider, or swimmer, there might be potential here.
As long as the only interesting interaction is with the jumper, though, I think a well-working jumper could fulfill the main use of the runner - getting a lemming ahead of the crowd - just fine by itself, as it already does frequently in Lemmings 2.

Slider
I've already spoken about how weaker versions of existing skills can be useful from a level designer's perspective before. The slider is a climber in reverse: A floater that only works on straight walls. Add in the fact that it always turns around when doing a slide, this one could provide a lot of interesting opportunities, considering that turning lemmings around just the right number of times is one of the main challenges of many advanced levels.

L2 Stacker
While this skill's behaviour can be somewhat emulated in NeoLemmix by making the stacker a climber simultaneously and putting several stacks on top of each other, the resulting big stack is more like a climber staircase - one which can only be used from one side. The L2 stacker creates perfectly straight walls while lifting itself up with it simultaneously - and without having the option of climbing any further walls it encounters after having completed the stack, in contrast to the NeoLemmix stacker which, if used this way, continues to remain a climber afterwards.


Unique:
These skills do something which is currently absolutely impossible, therefore level design should benefit greatly from having such options available.

Jumper
Get over a blocker, over a trap, over little gaps, even over fire... Lix levels can already exploit the hell out of this skill, and there's a reason the Linux clone of Lemmings, Pingus, featured specifically this skill as the only additional one on top of the classic eight. When NeoLemmix can finally have this skill as well, this is going to blow the doors to new design options wide open!

Laser Blaster
There simply is no skill that can dig from below. The Laser Blaster does so from a range; an adaptation of the Twister that just moves up straight vertically and then move a couple of pixels to the side it's facing to prevent it from falling down again, this one could fill a niche unoccupied by any other of the skills currently existing in NeoLemmix / Lix.

Magno Booter
Harking back to the graphic set design space of "what can I do with this type of terrain / object?", the main new thing Lemmings Revolution added to the game was the gravity reversal object. In NeoLemmix, this would turn Miners into Fencers, Fencers into Miners, Builders could suddenly build downwards (another currently impossible task)...
Just playing through Lemmings Revolution outlines the loads of potential this skill has - as long as it is possible to assign different skills to it while the Lemming is turned on its head.
In contrast, if the magno booter were to behave like in Lemmings 2, meaning it would be a skill like the climber or swimmer which can't do anything else in the meantime, the design space would be severely limited. In that case I'd rather advise for the introduction of the Lemmings Revolution gravity reversal object at some time in the remote future.

Rock Climber
This skill has two main uses:
1) The ability to climb diagonal walls.
2) The ability to switch to a shimmier while hanging from the ceiling.
This one could become the ideal brother for the climber, like the glider for the floater. If one had asked me before I knew NeoLemmix whether I'd consider a skill like the glider necessary, I probably would have said no. But now that I have seen how much difference there actually is between the two skills, I think the same is true for climber and rock climber.
I don't know how far the development of the shimmier currently is, and what the plans are regarding its interaction with climbers. But if the ultimate goal is to make a climber-shimmier transition possible, then the rock climber would be the way to go, while at the same time adding something new. It wouldn't be wise to change the behaviour of a standard skill like the climber, after all.

Shimmier
The ceiling is unexplored territory for Lemmings so far. Should a gravity reversal object be introduced, the dedicated design space for the shimmier would shrink, of course. But having such an ability as an assignable skill is always nice, too. In essence, the gravity reversal object would be to the shimmier what radiation and slowfreeze were to bombers and stoners - just without the messy execution and a lot more puzzle potential .

Roper
As said for the Laser Blaster, the only direction destructive skills can't go currently is straight upwards.
For creative skills, the only way they can't go is downwards (neither straight nor diagonally).
While the idea of a downward stacker creating a wall at the edge of a platform for another crowd at the bottom or a climber to go up certainly sounds interesting - I already see the Medieval "Rapunzel" levels coming - the main niche the Roper could fill is that of a downward builder / a creative version of the miner.
Sending a lemming ahead, turning it around and mining the way free for the crowd is a common feature of many levels; it would be nice to be able to do the equivalent with a creative skill across gaps.
Perhaps the behaviour should be adapted though, so that the Roper can't go higher than a straight horizontal line, or maybe not even that - reserving this use for the platformer. Because the Roper as it is featured in Lemmings 2 is pretty broken, serving as a builder, blocker, platformer, and downward builder all at once.

Superlem / Icarus Wings / Jet Pack
Well, this one is obvious, I guess? A freely moving single lemming that can fly around... no levels are more jump-and-run like, more in danger of backroutes, and less original Lemmings-like than levels featuring such a skill. But it still would be something completely new, of course - even though I wouldn't be a fan of it .


In general, the ability to affect terrain from a distance, as present in the Laser Blaster, Bazooker / Mortar, and Archer / Spearer / Thrower, is something entirely new as well. By extension, one could put the Roper into this category, too, but to me, the Roper still creates terrain from where he is currently standing, whereas the Archer / Spearer / Thrower can go across a gap, with the resulting terrain being separated from the lemming completely.


Anything I missed? Any slumbering potential you see in certain objects or skills that are not currently accessible to level designers in NeoLemmix or Lix?

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!

While most tricks you can do with the classic eight skills are fairly well-known among the veterans here in the forum, I believe one reason why the new NeoLemmix skills are getting used less frequently is the fact that people simply have fewer interesting ideas of what to do with them.

So I thought, if the old skills have their own thread for discussing all the tricks you can do with them, there should also be one for the new skills, right?

Disclaimer: I'm using example pictures from my packs "Pit Lems", "Lemmicks", and also the upcoming "Lemmings World Tour" here while explaining part of the solution, so... spoiler warning!


GLIDERS
In my opinion, gliders are the skill with the most design potential by far among the new skills. Their ability to move diagonally downwards or upwards (with updrafts) in any direction opens up to directions of movement lemmings never had access to before.
- The diagonal movement can be used to get a glider ahead of the crowd if there's no way to hold the crowd back.
- Gliders can be used to recruit a second pioneer lemming (see below).
- Just like floaters, gliders can fall into exits without terrain underneath.
- The fact that they open up their parachute just after a while of falling, like floaters do, can be exploited to create one-way updrafts.
- Similarly to a climber going over a wall, turning around and mining down to allow the crowd to follow, gliders can do the opposite: Go across a gap, turn around and build in the direction they were coming from. Floaters can only do this if they land on solid ground, and then turn around to build a splatform.


A one-way updraft. A glider coming from the left will be able to cross over to the right side, but not the other way round, because the parachute won't open up in time before the lemming is out of the trigger area.

A builder from the left can't cross this gap. A glider needs to hover over, turn around, and then build from the right.

STONERS
Perhaps the most powerful skill among the new ones, probably due to its similarity to the builder. Even though it kills a lemming, the fact that it creates terrain out of thin air and a single use can break falls of almost the entire height of a normal level easily makes up for the loss. Like the builder, its potential for multi-purpose use is what makes the stoner so powerful - and therefore also in need of rigorous backroute checking whenever it's introduced into a level.
- Stoners can hold back climbers, like regular blockers - but contrary to stackers.
- They can however also do this on walls a climber would otherwise climb up, like bombers!
- Stoners can bridge gaps like builders, although they're obviously not very effective for that purpose.
- Stoners interact with builders very well, though, compensating for the builder's height gain whenever it is unwanted by creating "stepping stones".

Lemorials (Pit Lems, LOL 08). The entire level can be solved using only stoners.

A single builder cannot cross this gap; a "stepping stoner", akin to the Mayhem level "Stepping stones", is required as a stop in the middle. Sometimes it may even be necessary to dig into the stoner, in order to get low enough in order to make enough space for the second builder to finish its work.

STACKERS
Even at release rate 1, as long as there's only a single hatch (which is still the most common scenario), at least one lemming will always slip past the stacker. As a player, you will often hate this - as a level designer, you should absolutely love it!
- In pioneer-style levels, this isn't a problem at all: The lemming slipping past simply becomes the pioneer you needed anyway.
- When using a stacker to block of a path where no lemming at all is supposed to - e.g. on the side behind the hatch, facing away from the exit - you usually do not want a lemming slipping by. Again, it pays to make the second lemming the pioneer, so that there is more space between the first lemming (the stacker) and the third one, who should have a mucher harder time now getting past the stack before it's completed.
- Stackers are blockers that do not hold back climbers. You can create nasty surprises this way where climbers end up killing themselves while everyone else is safe!
- At the same time, stackers allow to easily recruit a second pioneer lemming by using a climber (see below). This is a huge advantage compared to blockers or stoners, which usually have to be removed or built over, both of which contain the danger of further lemmings slipping by.
- Stackers can make climber-unfriendly walls climber-friendly by just stacking a bunch of stacks on top of each other to create an almost straight wall.
- In combination with walkers, stackers can be used for the infamous stacker staircase, which gains height more quickly than regular builder staircases, but does not extend very much in the horizontal dimension. This is the vertical equivalent to platformers.
- A slight variation of the stacker staircase is the stacker ramp, created by using stackers and fencers.
- The question of how to get rid of the stack to free the crowd is also a challenge in and of itself. Bash or fence through? Build or platform over it? Have a climber climb on top and bomb or dig down? It's not always that obvious which skill has to be saved for last here, contrary to blockers which are usually either blown up, turned into walkers, or freed with a basher or miner (rarely a digger).

SWIMMERS
Swimmers actually have quite a lot in common with gliders - it's just that water is their equivalent to updrafts :
- Water breaks a swimmer's fall, like updrafts do for regular lemmings (and always so, if they land inside the updraft). Contrary to updrafts however, water is deadly to all non-swimmers, so usually building across it is required - which takes away the beneficial effect of breaking falls. You can force the player to think about how to properly sequence this!
- Both swimmers and gliders will always move to the top of the trigger area of the respective water or updraft eventually. This can be used to gain height.
- Like gliders, they can travel across gaps that can't be accessed from one side to close these gaps from the other side.

Use a swimmer to break the fall.

A platformer from the left can't bridge across the water. A swimmer needs to cross it, turn around, and then platform from the right.

PLATFORMERS
- When provided instead of builders, the fact that platformers in NeoLemmix do not gain height can be used as a real drawback for players. Not only is it much harder to create splatforms this way - how do you even get out of a pit if just a single lemming happens to fall into one?
- On a related note, platformers can't be assigned on even ground. This is especially relevant when working with the backwards walkers or turn around on assign gimmicks in NeoLemmix 1.43, as can be seen in my pack "Lemmicks"; but also when you want to assign cloners to a platformer, or just use it to turn the lemming around in general.
- As a level designer, plan the width of your gaps precisely, depending on whether you want the platformer to turn around at the end or not. Also keep in mind a player always has the option of having the lemming walk up to the final pixel of terrain before assigning the skill, so that you don't experience any surprises that change the behaviour of this skill completely!

FENCERS
Fencers are not only miners in reverse; they are also an excellent way to create self-made one-way fields.
- The "miner in reverse" allows for a new twist on the classic "send a climber up and have him mine down to get the crowd up, too" paradigm: Send a floater / glider / digger down, and use the fencer to create a safe passage for the others from below.
- Making two fencers go through each other's paths is a lot harder than with builders or miners, but it can be done. The shaft behind one fencer needs to be resealed with terrain, though, in order for the other one to pass and continue his task.
- Ever freed a blocker from below? Fencers can do this just like miners can!
- The option of inverting one-way down arrows to create one-way up arrows which only fencers can pass through gives this skill an actual monopoly.
- If a fencer's tunnel ends high enough, it may not be possible to return into the tunnel from the other side. This gives the fencer potential to be used as a blocker, since blockers act like one-way fields attached to lemmings.
- Like with the stacker though, these "one-way fields" usually still can be overcome by climbers, who will be able to climb into the tunnel - which is obviously not possible with actual one-way fields .

A single fencer from the left can allow lemmings to pass to the right without any lemmings from the right passing through to the left. This is not possible with a single basher.

CLONERS
The cloner has absolutely no design space on its own, apart from compensating for lost lemmings. But once you couple it with all the other skills, its potential grows exponentially!
- The potential for synergies with builders, miners, and bashers is almost infinite.
- But also stackers shouldn't be overlooked; a stoner and a stacker can create a nice pit to trap the crowd, if done correctly.
- Cloning platformers often only works in very specific places, usually on poles where there is no terrain to either side. But it can be very effective, because it allows you to provide the player with what seems to be a too low count of platformers, one which has to be compensated by using the cloners!
- Likewise, providing seemingly too few permanent (=athletic) skills requires the player to think through the steps in which these different permanent skills have to be assigned, so that each clone has the skills it should have, and equally importantly, doesn't have any skills it shouldn't have! Otherwise a cloner might climb over a wall it's not supposed to climb over, or glide into a trap where it normally wouldn't have landed.
- Sometimes, a high drop along a straight wall has to be broken by a faller bombing into the wall, and then a climber climbing into the bomber hole to build a splatform from there. Gliders can do this out of thin air; with cloners, this is possible even if the glider is facing in the same direction as the falling bomber before.
- Sometimes, two pioneer lemmings facing in the same direction are required, rather than two lemmings moving in opposite directions. For that purpose, it is crucial to find the right spot to clone so that either of the two lemmings hits a wall as quickly as possible, so that it turns around and follows the other one.

DISARMERS
While this skill may have the least design space of all, it actually lends itself very well to some of the hardest types of levels out there .
- Hard for Flopsy-levels where the crowd is difficult to control, and the disarmer has to get a bunch of work done before the crowd arrives and kills itself.
- Pre-placed lemmings or several hatches, where disarmers come out of one of them and need to clear the path for the lemmings from the other hatches.
- The disarmer is a pickup skill; getting to collect it is the main challenge of the level, not the actual use of the skill itself.

Athletic aesthetics (Pit Lems, LOL 04). A surprisingly hard level for its early position in the pack, this one is all about stalling while the disarmer is doing his job.

WALKERS
On the one hand, this is probably the second-most powerful skill from all the new ones - given that it combines specific powers of the builder and the miner to free blockers, interrupt skills and turn lemmings around. On the other hand, the possibilities for specific use of this skill are very limited. "Know your needs" applies to this one more than to all the others:
- If you need to turn a lemming around or interrupt a skill without providing aditional destructive (miner) or creative (builder) opportunities, provide walkers;
- However, if it's crucial that the lemming can only turn around in specific places (hitting his head / tanking on steel), or that the blocker isn't supposed to be freed just by assigning a skill, then you should rather provide another builder or miner than potentially breaking the level with a walker.




A final word on the "second pioneer lemming" issue:
The above shown example of the "stepping stoner" is a case where you are going to need a second pioneer lemming:
- The first lemming goes ahead and does its job; however, at some point you have to sacrifice it - in this case for creating a stoner.
- Now you need a second pioneer lemming to finish the job - but how do you draw one out of the crowd without releasing the entire bunch?

In classic lemmings, the most elegant way to do this is to trap the crowd in a digger pit and then pulling single climbers from that pit (fortunately you have the arrow keys in NeoLemmix, to make sure you only select a lemming facing in the intended direction).

Usually however, you have to do more impractical things:
- Blowing up the blocker and immediately assigning a new one, costing you an additional lemming and bomber.
- Temporarily freeing the blocker with a walker and then re-assigning it immediately. If several lemmings are clumped together though, they will still slip past when you assign the blocker.
- Building over the blocker and cutting of the staircase to prevent other lemmings from following - an effort which is going to cost you at least two different skills.

With NeoLemmix skills, in contrast...
- the stacker provides a welcoming 2-in-1 solution: The first pioneer slips past by itself; the second one can climb over the stack while the rest of the crowd is held back.
- When lemmings fall down a ledge, you can place a blocker / stacker / stoner on the bottom below, but still close to that ledge. As long as there are still lemmings spawning from the hatch, a glider falling from the ledge can get over the blocker / stacker / stoner, while all the other lemmings continue to get stuck behind it.



Since I like to enforce "stepping stoners" frequently, I also often run into the "second pioneer lemming" issue, so it's good to see how the other NeoLemmix skills compensate for this built-in drawback of the otherwise very powerful stoner .