Lemmings presents GOTTA GO FAST!!! v2.00 [Difficulty: Medium - Very Hard]

[kaywhyn]

The 7th and final main rank Chilli Dog has finally fallen after a lot of struggling and hence I have earned the "coveted" chili dog! Replays attached and of course more feedback

Chilli Dog Rank Feedback

Being the final main rank of the pack before the two bonus ranks of Encore and Toolkit, Chilli Dog contains the hardest levels of GGF. I definitely agree here that near the end of the pack is harder than Seb Lems, as Chilli Dog is pretty Rapture and beyond difficulty. Even though I had an easy time for the most part in the early ranks and was showing signs of struggling starting with the Super Sonic rank, I had even more trouble with the Chilli Dog rank, throughout the entire rank. Nonetheless, these were really great challenges and there are still some standout levels here!

Spoiler

Chilli Dog 1 - Flopsy verses The World Excellent level to start off the rank and not too difficult either despite the 2-of-everything skillset As mentioned, I'm sure that's a typo with "verses," where it should be "versus"

Chilli Dog 2 - Stop the Press! Harder than the previous level but another great one! As you have noticed, I figured out the solution fairly quickly here. Luckily the talisman didn't need too much tweaking from my non-talisman solution, but there was still some things to be careful of, such as making sure climbers who aren't swimmers don't go out to the left for the buttons.

Chilli Dog 3 - The Gonalston Crossroads Very hard level, though the hardest part of the solution is the beginning of how to contain the crowd while not using too many skills. The rest of the solution I was able to figure out quickly, as you've mentioned. I struggled even more with the talisman, though that's simply due to how I didn't figure out the correct spot to do the containment. I believe it normally doesn't work with digging and bombing at a 99RR, but rather it uses the vague mechanic of the extra distance fallen from the entrance in order to be able to contain every Lemming but one if you dig immediately below the entrance. Nice solution but wow I would probably say a little too difficult for its position considering all the precision that's needed for the level and solution

Chilli Dog 4 - Let's Go Rock Climbing! Much easier than the previous level though still not easy by any means. Somewhat difficult but it wasn't too bad. This is the first level where I don't have the original video footage due to foolishly thinking OBS was recording but it wasn't because I forgot to change it back to the hotkey I use when I was recording my post-commentary for the Chilli Dog 3 talisman. In any case, there are two replays attached, the one with the earlier timestamp being the original, but the solutions are more or less the same as one another. The very lenient save requirement makes the level much easier than intended

Chilli Dog 5 - Whodunnit? The second and last level thus far where I don't have the original video footage. I struggled longer with the level than you actually see in the LP, as I also fiddled around the left side to try and get up the level with a bit of success but ultimately one in which it won't work because of running out of skills. The level was still not figured out when I wanted to "pause" the recording and that's when I found out to my horror that OBS wasn't recording at all In any case, it would had likely taken me another 15-20 minutes or so before I finally figured out the solution. This level received a backroute fix last month before I started my LP and now it finally all seemed properly patched up! Excellent solution and I can definitely see why you consider this one of your favorites, as this too is one of mine Love all the preplaced builder staircases and stacker!

Chilli Dog 6 - Buzzkill Can be a difficult level but it's not too bad, especially if you make use of the swimmer, but apparently much harder if you don't (talisman). I completely underestimated the difficulty of the talisman! It was pretty fun and enjoyable to figure out the best way to go through the level while also trying to be efficient with the skills. The main challenge was getting through the level with only platformers and stackers as your main constructive skills. The digging destructive skills are also pretty limited, so skills have the tendency to run out quickly.

Chilli Dog 7 - Round and Round and Away We Go! One of my favorites! The hardest part was figuring out how to get everyone down safely, and getting up the narrow corridor to the exit can be tricky as well. I really love how all the solution comes together as you can logically deduce it piece by piece!

Chilli Dog 8 - Pedalpusher Very hard but an excellent level and yet another one of my favorites! The solution is a little precise in some places, though I believe this is just another case where I made the solution more complicated than it needs to be The diggers especially can be quite difficult to figure out where they go, and the beginning has a really good red herring of making you think you need to bomb both trap triggers away when you only need to bomb the one on the right away. Bombing that and then bashing is not easy to see at all! Same thing with digging at the top so that you avoid using a builder. Well done with this level!

Chilli Dog 9 - The Panic Room I thought this level would be difficult due to there being zombies, which is a type of level I tend to struggle with a lot when playing and solving them, but it really isn't that hard. I ended up being stumped here, though that's because I overlooked a lot of basic stuff In particular, I thought the miner would be involved in some complicated setup, but no, it's not. It's just used to get the higher of the bottom entrances up, while the bottom right can simply be released with a digger with the help of the stacker. Nice use of bashing to release the top right entrance, where I initially thought it was a blocker under the entrance and then dig it free with a faller from the hatch. I believe in this way you end up losing more than you can afford. Nice level and yes I agree that it's surprising that this level stumped me At the same time, I wanted to get a gym workout in before my local gym closed, hence why I ended up stopping the recording early, as I would had kept going otherwise if it wasn't already close to closing time

Chilli Dog 10 - One Of Us Has Split Personalities Somewhat challenging, though I had pretty much all of the solution figured out somewhat quickly, with the only part wrong being the exit part, where I incorrectly thought it was a reverse miner. I also kept fiddling around with the middle area in order to prevent the climber from going back to the left and drowning, but no matter what a hole was always made, even if you fill it up with a stack and then fence through it to make it steppable for the swimmers. The correct way for the exit is digging for the swimmers to step up and then fence to reach the exit. Can't believe that eluded me for a while! Nice challenging level and puzzle with figuring out how to get each of the two swimmers and two climbers out of their predicament and to the goal!

Chilli Dog 11 - Madame Lemga One of the hardest levels of the rank IMO, though my solution is way more complicated than it needs to be due to how I brought all of the crowd along and hence I needed the right timing and space to do the middle area with just the lone stoner pickup. That was the part I struggled with the most as a result, though the level in general is just hard to figure out with where the skills other than the constructives go. Another approach I tried was with a lot of RR fiddling, which would work, except the climber who releases everyone with a stack would get himself into danger by walking into the trap on the left. Yet another approach I tried was a unique one with releasing everyone with a stoner in the middle due to how some of the stoner terrain can appear a bit above terrain so that everyone can step up into the miner tunnel when destroying the OWW, but again skill shortage problems. Nice level, but wow, a pretty hard one! A lot of things look like they could work but they don't.

Chilli Dog 12 - Detonator Much easier than the previous level but still no pushover. It wasn't too difficult to figure out the solution, though I still needed to optimize some parts in order to not run out of skills. The digger placements can also be pretty annoying due to how really precise they need to be in order to be able to bomb through both sides of the OWWs. Other than that, this was a somewhat enjoyable level to play and puzzle through

Chilli Dog 13 - My Own Worst Enemy The solution is pretty obvious for the most part, it's the execution that's the main difficulty and challenge IMO. The start is quite similar to Chilli Dog 3 in that the 99RR makes it quite difficult to be able to contain the crowd and the really tricky terrain you need to work with. As was pointed out to me, my solution is much harder than it needs to be due to being timing heavy intensive and luck with getting everyone past the stack at the end. The talisman was where I raged thanks to that one freaking Lemming who decides to not get past the stack like everyone else did!  

Chilli Dog 14 - Lemon Flavoured Rice Pudding Not as hard as it looks despite appearances, though the time limit can be a problem if you allow it to be. If you multi-task even slightly, you should be fine, though the one must appears to be to work the water gaps simultaneously in order to even be able to beat the clock. Here, I thought the talisman would be pretty difficult to obtain, but luckily it wasn't too bad and once again just needed a slight tweak to my non-talisman solution. Nice level and design here!

Chilli Dog 15 - Pseudologia Fantastica v2 Much harder than I expected! A lot of the time, I thought the double basher would be too wasteful at the start, so it took me a really long time before I finally found an approach that works. For both talismans, luckily my non-talisman solution just needed a few minor tweaks. I obtained them in separate runs, but I later tried the level again offline and I have confirmed it's possible to get both in the same solution. So, if Flopsy wants to in a future update, both requirements can be combined into one talisman This is the 4th replay in the zip file. Nice solution, especially with feeding the worker platformer pickups to keep going. Kind of reminds me of that one United Biolab level in the 4th rank where you don't start with skill

Chilli Dog 16 - Check My Eyelids For Holes! Hard but another excellent level here which is one of my favorites! Really love how the solution all comes together slowly piece by piece as you deduce it carefully by logic Like Armani, figuring out how to get the first blocker down safely is the hardest IMO, though in my case it isn't too bad as I just gave the glider skill to him after collecting it The many holes can be somewhat annoying when trying to get around them, but this was an intentional level design choice, even if it looks as if they might had been for backroute fixing

Chilli Dog 17 - The Other Way One of the hardest levels of the rank, considering how long I struggled before I found a backroute for both the non-talisman and talisman solutions, which involved cheesing through the trap at the start. I kind of had a feeling the way to go would be through the bottom left and going around to the right to get back up to the top and to the exit, I just had trouble figuring out the bottom left with getting everyone down safely. Turns out I did that part completely wrong and that there was one thing that eluded me and that is I didn't think to see what happens when everyone goes down together with the digger in order to land safely with the stack to make the splatform. I wouldn't say I'm more dangerous with stackers than Nessy, though with how I have used them in very fiddly ways, I suppose I can be

Chilli Dog 18 - & Knuckles Wow, what a beast of a level to play and solve considering the huge size and also a skillset which looks to be plentiful but is actually quite restrictive! Even after spending 2 hours playing the level live, I couldn't get the level solved. In my offline sessions, I ended up needing at least another 1.5 hours or so before I finally succeeded. As Armani has mentioned, keeping the climbers out of trouble is definitely the main problem and challenge of the level. I made the far right side harder and more precise than it needs to be, though I did indeed try fencing to connect with the miner, but I think I kept having skill shortage problems. I believe it might be necessary to dig before fencing to hit the steel, though I think this is just simply reverse when to do the digging, which is dig before miner. I'll need to check that. I also had problems with getting the timing to work, though I think it's just a matter of going through the OWW soon after getting the parallel miners on the far right. Nice collab level with Flopsy designing the level and Wafflem coming up with the solution, but wow, quite a hard level! In fairness, it is the very end of the rank, so its high difficulty is completely justified

Chilli Dog 19 - It's Tea and Biscuits Time! Very hard level, though one in which I had pretty much all the solution figured out somewhat quickly, just the crowd release and avoiding the teleporter took me a really long time to figure out. I was told the extreme precision needed to avoid the teleporter is indeed intended. There are other ways to avoid it as well, but if you do so, then you won't have the necessary skills to be able to complete the level later and/or you end up losing too many because you get some trapped by using the teleporter. Turns out you can't even afford to get a single Lemming trapped up there. I really like the return of the core concept of "Everything Falls Into Place" with the long builder/miner in this level, though it's much harder to figure out where and how to set it up IMO. In the end, I didn't use the shimmier, so perhaps this could be a talisman itself in a future update Nice level but wow, definitely agree it's quite possibly the hardest of the entire pack.

Chilli Dog 20 - Time To Get Closer The final new level of the main part of the pack I haven't played (I already played and solved Chilli Dog 21 from years ago when it was part of LOTY2021). Even though I found this one quite easy like Armani did, this is still a great level! I do find it surprising that Nessy found this one difficult I pretty much had the solution figured out quickly, with pretty much the only thing incorrect being where the second platformer goes. I made use of the highlight feature to be able to block behind the platformer and after the miner in order to turn the latter. Also, I had the wrong idea of how to get the climbers up to the top at the right time to block and turn the miner, but then I quickly realized a much easier and more reliable way to achieve this. I got lucky with obtaining the talisman on a blind playthrough of the level

Chilli Dog 21 - 14 Hour Supernova Level design is based on Nepster's "Final Frustration" from NepsterLems but here Flopsy's level is far easier. I spent far longer on the level than was necessary due to being stubborn with trying to go for a save all, though I later abandoned it after a while once I was able to determine it's just impossible. If you try to conserve the builders as much as possible, then you run out of the digging destructive skills and vice versa. You may have twice the amount of builders than you are given in Nepster's level, but don't be fooled, as they will run out very quickly. For my LP, I took the much easier way to solve the level as I know from watching Icho's video solution that I completely overlooked the fact that there's enough climbers for one entrance (far left) and enough floaters for another (far right). However, I still neglected making everyone climbers for a while when I kept making routes that can get Lemmings up without needing to be a climber Just like the previous level, I got very lucky of being able to obtain both talismans in the same solution! Then I followed up and showed off my LOTY2021 solution from 4 years ago just for kicks, so everyone can see how massively overcomplicated it is when I neglected to use most of the climbers/floaters and used the builders very suboptimally

In both of my solutions, I didn't use the teleporter that would had massively helped with the right area with the plentiful OWWs. In the case of the much easier solution I spent a while in my LP, for whatever reason I thought that was a huge fire trap blocking it to get to it safely. I didn't realize it was terrain and not a trap until I had used CPM near the very end of my LOTY2021 solution Guess that's something I completely forgot about from 4 years ago after watching Icho's solution. I did have a thought that maybe one can get a save all if the teleporter is used, so I tried for a time offline after getting the level solved in my LP, but I abandoned it after about 20 mins or so when I was counting the gaps that still needed builders and finding that there wouldn't be enough, especially when there's still the very tricky narrow corridor to build up to the exit. So, I would be surprised if anyone is able to pull off a save all!

Fun aside fact: It took me 1.5 hours before I finally got Final Frustration solved and hence I finally solved all of NepsterLems after 3 years!                            

All rightie, all levels of the 7 main ranks of the pack are solved! With 7 ranks done, that means I have solved 147/189 levels of the pack. Even though I've struggled a lot with both the Super Sonic and Chilli Dog ranks, I continue to enjoy the pack very much ever since I started LPing it from 3 weeks ago. I look forward to seeing the remaining 42 levels of the two bonus ranks of Encore and Toolkit!

Perhaps I should celebrate my achievement of getting through the Chilli Dog rank by getting an actual chili dog to eat!