This looks like a fun challenge! I'd like to take a crack at it, though time might be spotty this weekend. I whipped something up in Blender/Krita for the replay icon.

Here's one with a dead-on camera angle.


Here's one with a slightly angled view, to hit the 32x24 aspect ratio a bit better.


It's a 3D model, so the lighting and camera angle can be whatever we like.


Which one do you like better?

I don't know what you had in mind for art style, but I have AnimationFactory.com on the brain atm, so I'm leaning towards simple, cartoony 3D renders?

Ah OK, good to know. Thanks for the explanation.

Quote from: Airwave on February 27, 2026, 11:07:07 PMHowever, I then checked YouTube and discovered there's a solution with 17 saved using a very odd glitch I've never seen before (if you turn a miner into a bomber and time it so that they would explode just before breaking through the last row of pixels, they die but there isn't an explosion and no hole is created).

That's not quite what happens. When the miner-bomber oh-nos, because of a positioning glitch (during part of the miner's animation, his position is below where it should be) he notices that there is no ground under him and falls. On this specific level, he falls out of the level before he can explode; if that didn't happen, he would explode like any other faller-bomber.

The same glitch can be used with a blocker instead (not on this level, of course) -- a miner can become a blocker on air and instantly transition to a faller. This was used in the first 100% solution to Wicked 6, although I think it has been achieved glitchless since then.

Hi  Guys,

I'm new to the forum but I've been playing Lemmings on and off since the 90s. I got back into it in the last few month when I discovered RetroLemmini and have been playing a lot lately.

I'm currently working my way through Oh No! More Lemmings as I never played it before (only had a SNES back in the day) and have loads of replays I'll share once I've completed Havoc.

In the meantime I'll share my replays of Havoc 10 - Flow control, which I just finished working on. I managed to save 16 with two methods (both with the same number of skills). However, I then checked YouTube and discovered there's a solution with 17 saved using a very odd glitch I've never seen before (if you turn a miner into a bomber and time it so that they would explode just before breaking through the last row of pixels, they die but there isn't an explosion and no hole is created). I managed to recreate this solution in RetroLemmini and saved a replay.

While writing this I just discovered the replay with 17 saved, which I recorded in version 2.7, doesn't work correctly in 2.8 and becomes unsynchronised. I'll record it again in 2.8 and upload both. It turns out the recording in 2.8 crashes while playing in 2.7. It seems all other replays are fine when played in 2.7 and 2.8 so I can only assume that glitch causes problems with replays.

One last thing, I noticed the replays in this thread from 2021 don't work in RetroLemmini. I guess they only work with older versions. I'm currently using version 2.8 and started saving replays with version 2.7.

Video of Havoc 10 - 17 saved with glitch:

You throw the eggs, too bad they both missed  

I wish I had more things to talk about instead of always boring people

That's awesome! Good luck with that

I'm aware that I didn't really answer your original question, so I'll give it my best shot. Assigning a level to a difficulty rank is some combination of a few different factors:

* How open-ended is it? If there are lots of different ways to solve a level, it's much easier for the player to find at least one.

* How long and complicated is the solution? For example, Fun levels and the first half of Tricky are both full of 20-of-everything levels, but the Tricky ones tend to be longer or give the player more that they have to do (e.g. two trapdoors).

* How close are the player's first impressions to the actual solution? For example, forging the path with a single lemming while the crowd are trapped is something the player learns early on, and is likely to be the first thing they try. Following a straight line to the exit, building over any gaps and bashing through any walls in the way, is easy to see; having to go around what looks like the main path is trickier.

* Does the level require any knowledge of game mechanics that goes beyond the basics of what the skills do? For example, traps killing only one lemming at a time; blockers turning lemmings performing a skill; interrupting a basher to make a little step -- all of these make levels harder for players who haven't seen the tricks before, but even for players who have seen them, as your repertoire of tricks expands, the process of analysing a level to see what tricks are needed gets more and more complicated.

Quote from: Proxima on February 27, 2026, 08:21:32 PMThere are a couple of axioms I follow:

* The designer is the worst at assigning difficulty to their own levels, because you cannot have the experience of solving it from a fresh start. This doesn't mean you should treat testers' words as gospel (especially as they can and will disagree with each other), but it does mean that testers' opinions should carry more weight than yours.

* Almost all usermade content is harder than the original games, and a different kind of difficulty. This is partly because NeoLemmix and Lix remove most of the execution difficulty, and have quality of life tools that allow designers to realise more complex puzzle ideas than were possible previously; it's also because when we played Lemmings for the first time, we were still learning what the skills do and how they interact, whereas almost all usermade content is aimed at players who are already familiar with the game.

* Different people will find different things difficult, and that is especially true in a puzzle game, where so much depends on how quickly you happen to hit the correct insight or get onto a good way of thinking about a level.

* It doesn't matter very much whether there is a strict difficulty curve. (For one thing, there is no reason why a pack has to have difficulty ranks at all; a pack that is all easy, or all medium, or all hard will be enjoyed by players at that level. But since it sounds like you want to make a pack with progression, I'll focus on that.) As far as possible, you want to avoid howlers like the original game putting the easy "Highland Fling" in the last rank, or (worse) a very hard level sticking out in the easy rank. But no-one will mind very much if, say, Tricky 14 of your pack is a little easier than Tricky 13. Occasional breather levels can be good to encourage the player to keep going.

Yeah I am playing RetroLemmini, which is a lot closer to the original, I haven't really liked playing with too many new features aside from stuff like framestepping, although I am aware you can turn these off in NeoLemmix and some of the new skills etc seem great.

That's a good point in that most people who use custom user packs obviously know more about Lemmings, but part of the reason I'm doing this is that I hope to teach my almost 4 year old nephew about the game of lemmings at some point, and I have many friends that played it when they were kids and haven't played since the 90s and said they'd like to play it again, and it would be nice to make easy levels for them to get familiar with it again. Also I really like just the art aspect of it and being creative.

There are a couple of axioms I follow:

* The designer is the worst at assigning difficulty to their own levels, because you cannot have the experience of solving it from a fresh start. This doesn't mean you should treat testers' words as gospel (especially as they can and will disagree with each other), but it does mean that testers' opinions should carry more weight than yours.

* Almost all usermade content is harder than the original games, and a different kind of difficulty. This is partly because NeoLemmix and Lix remove most of the execution difficulty, and have quality of life tools that allow designers to realise more complex puzzle ideas than were possible previously; it's also because when we played Lemmings for the first time, we were still learning what the skills do and how they interact, whereas almost all usermade content is aimed at players who are already familiar with the game.

* Different people will find different things difficult, and that is especially true in a puzzle game, where so much depends on how quickly you happen to hit the correct insight or get onto a good way of thinking about a level.

* It doesn't matter very much whether there is a strict difficulty curve. (For one thing, there is no reason why a pack has to have difficulty ranks at all; a pack that is all easy, or all medium, or all hard will be enjoyed by players at that level. But since it sounds like you want to make a pack with progression, I'll focus on that.) As far as possible, you want to avoid howlers like the original game putting the easy "Highland Fling" in the last rank, or (worse) a very hard level sticking out in the easy rank. But no-one will mind very much if, say, Tricky 14 of your pack is a little easier than Tricky 13. Occasional breather levels can be good to encourage the player to keep going.

I'm currently making a pack of 40 levels with 8 levels in each difficulty. However I am finding categorising them a bit of a challenge especially because a lot of levels which I initially think seem easy are actually pretty hard. How do you decide which levels will go where? Do you go by how hard they are compared with the original lemmings game?

I have cleared the whole MobiLems 2025 pack ! Joining my replays.

This was a great ride all along, with some very interesting levels like The Pit of Despair, Is So Simple (reference to Dolly Dimple ?), Tres Humbres, Walk The Plank, If A Lemming Falls, and many many more.

There were many hard ones, especially at the end (I'm looking at you Zombies levels...), but it helped me a lot honing my solving skills and now I'm more confident to tackle harder packs in the future.

I definitely understand why this pack is so well rated and gladly appreciated to be able to play it on NeoLemmix. Thank you for your work Mobius, hope to see you around the forum soon !

Now I'm left with that Outtakes rank that does not appear in the game. Coming to think of it, I guess those must just be the levels that Mobius took out when he made the 2025 update mentionned earlier, so he left them out of the pack deliberately ?