Kids Lemmings : awkward levels made by kids (11 levels, easy ?)

[Guigui]

My kids watched too much of me creating levels ! So they wanted to try to create levels of their own, and somehow succeeded.

Here is a compilation of 11 levels made by them that are awkward for sure, but actually enjoyable to solve. One may even need some thinking to do so ?

The .zip file is a bit heavy because it includes a very important soundtrack for one of the level, kids music tastes are what they are... Just unzip in your main NL folder.

The levels were 100% created by them, I just helped them using the editor and finding english names for the levels.

The pack is split in 2 ranks :
* Val from the first 3 letters of the name of my 7yo kid. He likes fire!
* Max from the first 3 letters of the name of my 10yo kid. He likes teleporters!


Here are two screenshots for you to taste their ingenious level design :

Val's Fire Burn More :


Max's Boat :


We hope you can spend a nice 20 minutes solving those levels and have fun deciphering how kids brain work.

[JawaJuice]

This was a fun diversion, @Guigui!

Quite easy of course, but also awkward, as advertised! I've played easier packs made by people a lot older There are some surprisingly decent levels here, given that they're designed by your kids. Good job, Val and Max! Replays attached. Probably backrouted a bunch of em, but hey, that's the way it goes

[Guigui]

Good job for clearing the pack JawaJuice 

I love how you take your time to give optimal solutions, like in Max 5 Sky Of The Night where you demonstrate how to slightly isolate a Lemming from the crowd to fill the tiny gap before the crowd comes, of Val's Fire Burn More where you dig at the precise place that allows the pioneer to come back and free the crowd.

Sure you did not solve all of them the way the kids saw it, but we loved to watch your clever solutions, thank you.

[JawaJuice]

Thanks to you and your kids for the pack, @Guigui! I look forward to more from you in future

[Ron_Stard]

Great levels, harder than I expected! 

[Guigui]

Thanks for playing the levels Ron_Stard 

[kaywhyn]

Hello @Guigui.

I found some time and played your sons' levels. My replays are attached! No LP though. I just don't have the energy these days to LP everything I play. Sorry!

edit: On closer inspection, there's more music missing that's not in the pack download, such as how some of the Genesis tracks have different names and a track called hebereke on Max 3. You might want to include them in the pack download too! Other than Max 2 and Val 3, all I heard was the Dos PC redbook CD music tracks on the levels

Two problems I have noticed regarding the music, and that is the special track on Max 2 is super quiet, and I would suggest including the Clammings music track with the pack download in the next update. For the former, I wasn't able to enjoy listening to the music while playing Max 2 Yes, I do recognize the music track. My baby sister first showed me it many years ago back when she was in either middle or high school. Where I'm from, here in America, we know it better as the Numa Numa song. The most common version heard is the original song in Romanian, Dragostea din tei, instead of the English translation, but videos of the latter are available to listen to on YouTube.

There is a level in Strato's Lemmings World Tour level pack that references the Numa Numa song in the level title, so if you're interested you can seek it out in his level pack Doesn't play the special music track on the level though! I can't remember if I suggested to Strato to use the Dragostea din tei music for the level, but nah, there's a good reason why he doesn't use it: The level would be one that doesn't use his custom recordings of the official L1/ONML music tracks.

For the latter, it wasn't an issue since I've played the level pack several years ago, but not everyone has downloaded the Clammings level pack and if that's the case then when they play this level pack they'll just hear the standard music rotation on Val 3. So, to help with this, I've attached the music track so that anyone who plays the pack can download it and also so you can put it in the pack download for the next update I've also attached the Clammings music track in the OP so that everything is in one place for convenience Simply extract to the music folder in your NeoLemmix directory.

The levels overall are indeed kind of "awkward" as you say, some more than others, but I'm still impressed by what your sons have managed to make! Heck, I would even say they're better on level visuals than me, but then again I'm always thinking my level designs visually aren't that good due to always thinking I'm not an artist. Never was, and still am not However, this community apparently has always appreciated my levels puzzle/solution-wise while also telling me that I have greatly improved in my designs in the last several years. You can still see visages of my less than exemplary level visuals in my very early levels from 5 years ago back at the start of 2021, when I first got into level designing for Lemmings, in Armani's LDC Compilation Pack, for example. Nowadays, I can't really look at my first levels without cringing badly at least once, as I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh, what atrocities I made back in the days. I intend to update some of those early levels of mine that can definitely use a visual face lift, and believe me, there's a few that can use it

Regarding difficulty, believe it or not IMO your sons' levels are anything but easy! So, I'm in agreement with Ron Stard here that I also thought the levels are harder than I expected. If anything, I would say the difficulty classification of the pack is Easy - Medium. Of course, that's mostly because I challenged myself to go for a save all on a lot of these levels, but of course if you don't bother with that then the levels are easier. Save all's is just my playstyle when it comes to Lemmings As I've mentioned at times, because I internalize save all's, levels where you're allowed or even required to lose 1 or more Lemmings often get me into trouble, but that's usually because I don't pay attention to the save requirement

I managed to get all the talismans on my first pass on the levels that have one Of course, it's easy to see why for Max 3, because of what I said with my playstyle going for save all's as much as possible  

Wow, I like how Val put the France country flag four times on Val 4!

I really like the design Max did for both Max 2 and Max 4!  

Needless to say, already your young sons kind of already have the makings of difficult custom Lemmings levels! Perhaps one day your third child that's on the way will be designing levels in the far future and will make similar difficult levels as your first two kids?

Once again, great job to your kids for their first attempts at making custom Lemmings levels!

Finally, I would like to close off on a question that I was wondering about by something my cousin from France told me about last week regarding grade levels of schools in France. She told me that there's no third grade, that it goes from second grade to fourth grade. I've already asked Pieuw about this a few days ago and that it's more that the numbering/labeling system is different in France than, say, here in America. In fairness, my cousin told me she didn't know how to explain it, considering she's originally from Vietnam who has been living in France for the last several years with her family. Her husband, who is also originally from Vietnam, didn't say otherwise.

In essence, this Wikipedia article pretty much sums it up nicely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_France#Primary_school