After some weeks of tweaking, playtesting, kind words from JawaJuice, more tweaking, more playtesting, unparalleled backroute finder skills by kaywhyn, and more tweaking, I am happy to announce the Save One pack has been updated to its January 2026 version ! (Happy new year everyone btw)

You can find the updated pack in the original post of this thread, just unzip in your main NL folder.

Hopefully the pack is as less prone to not enjoyable backroutes as it can be. This has been a long way, and I send thanks again to everyone who participated in this update, either by playtesting or by sending replays earlier here.

Even though many levels layouts have changed in this update, I kept the original intended solutions. This means that if you had found the intended, you wont have trouble clearing a level whose replay has been broken by the update.
Still, I feel a bit bad about breaking so many replays. So I'm now making a list for all of you players to precise which levels have received significant changes, under spoiler after your respective quotes :

Quote from: IchoTolot on September 14, 2025, 07:34:59 PMJust posting an update of my replay collection. 

Spoiler

You know all intended since beta test.
EON 2, NEO 2, NEO 5, ONE 2, ONE 3, ONE 4, ONE 6 layouts have changed but the same solution works.
ONE 5 changed more, the intended is still the same but requires precise assignment of skill to clear easily.

Quote from: Armani on September 09, 2025, 10:43:21 AMresolved updated levels 

Spoiler

EON 2, NEO 2, NEO 5, ONE 2, ONE 3, ONE 4, ONE 6 layouts have changed but the same solution works.

ONE 5 changed more, and I blocked your backroute. Maybe you'll have to change your strategy to Save One ? Or find another backroute ? (please dont!)

Quote from: WillLem on November 07, 2025, 01:34:24 AMSolved the Eon levels ...

Spoiler

EON 2 has been modified to prevent your solution that made so little use of the crowd.

Be welcome if you want to try the other ranks. Though be aware that playtesters said that the level are not sorted by increasing difficulty, so do not hesistate to skip a level that feels too hard.

Quote from: Turrican on November 29, 2025, 02:26:07 AMI have tried ** all the ** ranks, and here are the replays of my solutions.

Spoiler

EON 2 : changed the vertical structure that allowed the pioneer to get in by himself. Cooperation with the crowd is required

NEO 2 : prevented your crazy backroute that went through one of the spikes route, when the title itself says it should not happen. Still cannot believe that this solution worked !

NEO 5 : layout has changed but you had the intended solution

The whole ONE rank changed ! You were the first to bakcroute it almost completely, JawaJuice and kaywhyn came after you and you all gave me major work to achieve this update. Thank you.
Be welcome to try the ONE rank again if you like, hopefully you'll find new levels here.

Quote from: JawaJuice on December 05, 2025, 09:05:22 PM"I'm in love with NEO 5 :p"

Spoiler

You know all intended solutions since your playtest, may have to replay some of them to get the green check.
Your alternate solution for ONE 4 is still possible, and kaywhyn found it instead of the intended during his playtest !

Quote from: darkshoxx on November 30, 2025, 09:46:59 PMCurrent Work In progress

Spoiler

NEO 2 has changed to prevent your nasty backroute of bashing illegal terrain to remove a single pixel under your feet. Intended solution is harder to spot. This level may not be positionned correctly in the whole pack in terms of difficulty.

ONE 3 has also changed to block your backroute that saved more than one. Once again this level may not be at its correct place, too easy for the last rank.

Feel free to try other ranks/levels if you like. As you have seen, the difficulty curve is not consistent !

Now, after all this time spent with the Save One concept that came to me (and my 10yo kid!) when toying with the editor, I'll try to give a set of 3 rules describing what would be, in my opinion, a very solid Save One level :

Rule 1) The player should only be able to save 1 lemming.

Rule 2) The lemmings count should be at least 2, and the saved lemming should not be able to reach the exit by himself. In other words, there should be interaction of any kind between the saved lemming and the other(s).

Rule 3) Even if there were more lemmings coming out from the entrance (lets say 20% more lemmings for instance), the player should still not be able to save more than one lemming.


Rule 1) is obvious. Rule 2) is what differentiate the Save One pack from Dexter's Lock and Key pack. And Rule 3) is the cherry on the cake but very hard to fulfill actually.
In the Save One pack, all levels (hopefully) satisfy Rule 1) and Rule 2), but not all levels satisfy Rule 3) :
Levels that fulfill Rule 3) in the most satisfying way imo : EON 4, NEO 2, NEO 3, ONE 2, ONE 3, ONE 5.
Levels that fulfill Rule 3) but in a not interesting way : EON 2, NEO 5, ONE 1.
Levels that do not fullfil Rule 3) : EON 3, NEO 4 (sorry IchoTolot, I did not state the rule to you!), ONE 4.


Finally, I now want to make a vow to try not to update the pack as frequently as I did until now. I've been working a lot those past weeks to get the pack to its current state and I feel it now deserves to be left untouched for a while.
I'm not hiding it will be hard for me to see you players going unintended ways --maybe even breaking Rule 1) you devils!-- , but I now understand this is the actual game played by the level designer.
I should learn to feel happy by just knowing that you people play the levels and have fun with them, so keep them replays coming ! 

Quote from: kaywhyn on January 03, 2026, 11:46:27 PM@hrb264

I checked your NL video and everything seems fine there to me, including the speed. Mine goes at about that speed as well, and I'm certain that goes the same for pretty much everyone else who uses NL, unless it's a weak machine and/or the user has a lot of open applications while playing NL and other settings in-game enabled, such as the high quality mini-map, though the performance hit with this particular setting on will especially be notable on really huge/tall levels, and even moreso if there are also a lot of animated objects in the level. Then even on modern machines it will tend to be very laggy. In contrast, at least FF in NL works properly, not like in the Windows version where the level is practically over in about a second once you engage it.   

Quote from: WillLem on December 22, 2025, 03:13:56 PMNice!

Here's kaywhyn's solution in action on WinLemm. The key to the digger assignments is to use the arrow keys to make sure the lemming is facing the correct direction. From there, the solution is reasonably straightforward, and saves 100% which is always good

Thanks, and nice job on this as well!

yes, i totally agree with you. Yeah fast forward is completely unusable on windows lemmings.

It's a nice interface (although i never played the dos version as a kid) , and it could have been just a glitch last night as it does seem better when i loaded it up just now. However, I'm finding retrolemmini a lot more easy to use so far and closer to how i remember lemmings as a kid, but i want to get used to neolemmix as well when i have time. Thanks for all your help.

@hrb264

I checked your NL video and everything seems fine there to me, including the speed. Mine goes at about that speed as well, and I'm certain that goes the same for pretty much everyone else who uses NL, unless it's a weak machine and/or the user has a lot of open applications while playing NL and other settings in-game enabled, such as the high quality mini-map, though the performance hit with this particular setting on will especially be notable on really huge/tall levels, and even moreso if there are also a lot of animated objects in the level. Then even on modern machines it will tend to be very laggy. In contrast, at least FF in NL works properly, not like in the Windows version where the level is practically over in about a second once you engage it.   

Quote from: WillLem on December 22, 2025, 03:13:56 PMNice!

Here's kaywhyn's solution in action on WinLemm. The key to the digger assignments is to use the arrow keys to make sure the lemming is facing the correct direction. From there, the solution is reasonably straightforward, and saves 100% which is always good

Thanks, and nice job on this as well!

Quote from: WillLem on January 03, 2026, 09:22:26 PM

Quote from: hrb264 on January 03, 2026, 07:31:18 AMI downloaded Neolemmix yesterday but the lemmings seem to walk incredibly fast and my reflexes aren't great at the best of times, is there a setting i can change so they walk slower?

Which version of NeoLemmix have you downloaded? If you open it and take a look at the main menu screen, the version number is printed at the bottom just above the yellow scroller.

The lemmings shouldn't be walking too fast, this may be a bug. If you have screen recording software installed I'd be interested to see how fast the game is running on your system.

There is a hotkey for "slow motion"  which slows the entire game down considerably, but you shouldn't have to use this for normal play. To use the hotkey, press F3 from the main menu (or click the yellow title card with the cogs) to access settings. From there, choose "Configure Hotkeys". You'll then be able to assign any key you wish to slow motion. From a quick check, I'm about 80% sure that there isn't a default, so configuring your own will be necessary if you do want to use it. But again, it shouldn't be necessary for just playing the game normally. Further investigation is needed!

Thanks very much, yeah it seemed massively faster than what I was used to when I used it last night, whereas I'm finding retrolemmini  quite easy to use. It probably is a bug, I'm trying to attach the screen recording now but it seems a really big file. You might be able to see some of it though?

Quote from: WillLem on January 03, 2026, 09:16:57 PMIt's possible that you might be getting the engines mixed up here as RetroLemmini doesn't have a highlight lemming feature (whereas NeoLemmix does). It's understandable to get them confused as there are quite a few of them at the moment.

I'm definitely using retrolemmini now. You're right, it doesn't have a highlight feature.

Sorry - I meant the fact when you select or move your mouse on a lemming, it shows up as C, A, etc under its name or the order in which it came out, whereas on windows lemmings, apart from the directional keys, you kinda have to hope for the best Also, I like the fact that you can add more than one skill when it's paused

Quote from: hrb264 on January 03, 2026, 07:31:18 AMI downloaded Neolemmix yesterday but the lemmings seem to walk incredibly fast and my reflexes aren't great at the best of times, is there a setting i can change so they walk slower?

Which version of NeoLemmix have you downloaded? If you open it and take a look at the main menu screen, the version number is printed at the bottom just above the yellow scroller.

The lemmings shouldn't be walking too fast, this may be a bug. If you have screen recording software installed I'd be interested to see how fast the game is running on your system.

There is a hotkey for "slow motion"  which slows the entire game down considerably, but you shouldn't have to use this for normal play. To use the hotkey, press F3 from the main menu (or click the yellow title card with the cogs) to access settings. From there, choose "Configure Hotkeys". You'll then be able to assign any key you wish to slow motion. From a quick check, I'm about 80% sure that there isn't a default, so configuring your own will be necessary if you do want to use it. But again, it shouldn't be necessary for just playing the game normally. Further investigation is needed!

Quote from: hrb264 on January 03, 2026, 09:43:01 AMThe lemmings walk a bit faster than what I'm used to but I'm really enjoying it and I like the highlight lemming features!

It's possible that you might be getting the engines mixed up here as RetroLemmini doesn't have a highlight lemming feature (whereas NeoLemmix does). It's understandable to get them confused as there are quite a few of them at the moment.

I'd recommend that you give RetroLemmini (i.e. the engine from this topic!) a try as well. It only offers the classic 8 skills, which is what you were looking for as far as I remember. NeoLemmix is the more widely-used engine on the Forums though, and has a lot more custom content available.

I´ll need some times testing, this might take a while. This pack completely work 12.12.5 version, but all replays not match new current version 12.12.4. This look slider mechanism is changed and those break every working replays. Levels with sliders have to play over again to match new version.Yes this piss me off.

Yes this is extremely frustrating and slow progress play some longest levels over again to match new version.

Also keep this mind. All levels replays might not work my custom + series and lemmings world. Those packs are maded 12.12.5 version. So levels with sliders might are changed. So just recommend keep 12.12.5. version to play those my old packs. I´ll somedays later look all my pack match new version. Rightnow im not sure if you towards "impossible" level if you play those new version.

Yes this look mostly levels with sliders. Orginal skills match always.

Yes this might take me few weeks depend how many replays those slider break. I´ll want make this pack match also 12.12.4 version.

I've just downloaded this and really like it so far! The lemmings walk a bit faster than what I'm used to but I'm really enjoying it and I like the highlight lemming features!

Quote from: WillLem on December 28, 2025, 02:26:23 AM

Quote from: geoo on December 25, 2025, 08:42:25 PMMore details in this post: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=1618.0

NeoLemmix and Lix are indeed the most-used custom engines on this Forum. However, the topic geoo points to is a little bit outdated. I'd recommend giving this post a look as well.

Also, NeoLemmix is no longer in development. NeoLemmix CE (Community Edition) continues where NeoLemmix 12.14 left off, adding only UI improvments and bugfixes (the internal game remains exactly the same, so all NeoLemmix packs will be playable in CE).

Thanks so much. I downloaded Neolemmix yesterday but the lemmings seem to walk incredibly fast and my reflexes aren't great at the best of times, is there a setting i can change so they walk slower?