Ultimate Lemmings 2.0 - All 2D Lemmings for Apple devices

[UltimateLemmings]

Let's go! I've released Ultimate Lemmings 2.0, my unofficial native now out of beta Swift port of the 2D Lemmings games, official and unofficial, for macOS, iOS, and tvOS. (iOS and Apple TV still in open TestFlight testing).


If this is your first encounter with the project, welcome! If you've followed the earlier releases, thank you for playing and sharing feedback.


What is Ultimate Lemmings?

Lemmings is a puzzle game about guiding a crowd to safety. The lemmings keep walking, even when that means walking into danger. You assign skills to turn them around, build bridges, dig through obstacles and find a route to the exit. Getting enough of them home is the puzzle.

Ultimate Lemmings brings Classic Lemmings, its expansions and related content together with native versions of The Tribes and Chronicles. You can revisit familiar levels, explore community creations, follow a learning journey or take turns with someone beside you in local Hot Seat.

It is perfect for touch controls. It even sings in vertical format on an iPhone. There are special delights included for iPhone Duo.

Optional modern controls give you room to experiment: rewind, instant retry, flexible speed, Precision Zoom and tiered hints. You can choose the presentation and assistance that suit how you want to play.

Every single soundtrack from every port, including fan remixes are included, and put to good use with the dynamic DJ function: Music is mixed together with jubilant versions of the same track being played once you meet the saved quota. There's HDR selection FX. Real nukes! Rewind, spindowns, spinups. You'll get it when you hear it. It is pure JOY!

The feature leading 2.0 is the original 1-bit Macintosh artwork, with a matching black-and-white gameplay panel. It is a wonderful way to revisit these games, or discover them for the first time.


Original Macintosh terrain, animated objects and lemmings, with matching monochrome gameplay controls.


Download Ultimate Lemmings 2.0 for Macintosh

Join the TestFlight beta for iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPhone Duo)

Join the TestFlight beta for Apple TV

Two colours. Immaculate dithering.

A salute to the original artists behind Psygnosis's Macintosh releases: their immaculate dithering deserves to be celebrated. Patterned rock, shading and tiny animated figures give black and white texture, depth and character. These artists made a single bit do an extraordinary amount of work.

The new option uses the original Macintosh black-and-white artwork banks for terrain, animated objects and lemming poses. The matching gameplay panel carries that look into the stone controls, bitmap lettering and skill selection. Optional permanent-skill backpacks use diagonal dithering for Climber, horizontal stripes for Floater and a checker pattern for both (custom addition to match the modern QoL affordances of this port!)


The original Macintosh dithering, up close.

Choose Settings → Graphics → Classic artwork → Artwork → Macintosh (1-bit). You can switch artwork during an attempt and keep your terrain edits and rewind history.

This choice covers Classic and its supported expansion families. The Tribes, Chronicles and NeoLemmix keep their separate artwork options. Reconstructed or missing fan pieces use monochrome dithering. Optional effects and the pointer keep their own settings.

What can I play?

• Classic Lemmings, Oh No! More Lemmings and seasonal content.
  
• Port-exclusive conversions and supported expansion families, including the Oh Yes! collection.
  
• Community levels, with a bundled Classic fan library of 6,020 levels across 535 packs.
  
• Lemmings 2: The Tribes, with its twelve tribes and their different skill sets.
  
• Lemmings 3: Chronicles, with its distinct tools and carried resources.
  
• Supported NeoLemmix content, subject to its current Beta support and required styles.
  

The different games retain their own rules and artwork choices. Their current support status is explained below.


Browse the games and packs, choose a level, or return to a personal favourite.

Ways to play

Learn and experiment. Try a route, rewind a mistake and adjust your timing on supported engines. Flexible speed and Precision Zoom help with both waiting and precise assignments. Tiered hints let you ask for a little help before revealing more. Need even more help? See below!

Follow a journey. Curated golden path journeys offer a route through levels that won't slam you into a difficulty walls the way the originals did! Supported saved journeys and sequence playlists can resume the actual attempt, with its simulation position, selected action and camera.

Keep your own collection. Personal profiles hold your records and favourites. Collections also keeps your last 50 distinct levels played, so you can find something you tried recently.

Share the Mac. Local Hot Seat lets players take turns on the same machine. The current player stays identified, and handovers wait for Ready. Retries and restored turns preserve ownership and stay paused until the player is ready.


Local Hot Seat: pass the controls, then choose Ready when the next player is settled.

Study a solution. Classic levels with a matching verified solution can show a recorded replay. After revealing it, you can enable Ghost solution to overlay translucent blue lemmings alongside your own attempt. They follow the current tick through play, pause, speed changes and rewind, without spending your skills or making moves for you.

The ghosts follow their recorded terrain. Their bridges and tunnels can differ from yours, so use them to study a route and its timing. Ghost overlays are a Classic feature.


Blue solution ghosts alongside the live attempt. Your lemmings, skills and terrain remain yours to control.

Choose the look and sound. Classic offers DOS, Amiga and Macintosh artwork choices. The app also has hundreds of soundtrack versions, with optional music libraries for people who enjoy comparing the different arrangements.

What's changed since 1.9.6?

For returning players, these are the main changes across 1.9.7 and 2.0:

• Original Macintosh 1-bit graphics, with matching monochrome gameplay controls and distinct backpack patterns.
  
• Resume the attempt inside a journey. Supported checkpoints restore the simulation position, selected action and camera. Classic, The Tribes and Chronicles restore paused. Older saves without a checkpoint continue from their saved level.
  
• Optional Classic ghost solutions. Reveal a verified solution, then follow its blue silhouettes alongside your attempt. Same-player retries retain the choice. A different level or player clears the revealed solution.
  
• Clearer keyboard help. Press ? for control annotations, or open All commands for the searchable reference. Help follows the active game and settings.
  
• Better camera and controller behaviour. Camera movement keeps the cursor anchored to its level position across Classic, The Tribes and Chronicles, including Precision Zoom. An active controller speed boost resets before pause.
  
• More consistent Hot Seat and recovery. Checkpoints preserve the player, queue and turn. Handovers wait for Ready. Closing sequel hints restores the previous pause state, while interruptions retain pause.
  
• Rendering and audio improvements. Terrain caches, crowd limits and adaptive optional effects reduce repeated rendering work. Rewind has shared vinyl-backspin audio across the three native games, respecting pause, mute and volume.
  
• Music and save fixes. Manual shuffle follows the selected collection, including with the essential library installed. Matching profiles can recover newer shared progress and saved Hot Seat journeys. Interrupted Classic journey music can recover while gameplay remains paused.
  
• More presentation polish. Home uses scenery from installed levels. Chronicles uses its regional title artwork. Results have clearer grouping and award help, and bomb countdowns use crisp digits above the lemmings.
  
• Seven added languages, with expanded support for accented Western Latin text in the original bitmap fonts.
  

Resume a supported saved journey at the attempt itself, with the correct player and paused state.

Seven added languages

Alongside English, 2.0 includes Spanish (Latin America), German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. The first time outside a single EU PS2 release this has been in Lemmings! The app follows your device preferred app language or region.

Current scope and known limits

Classic and The Tribes have Complete classifications and replayable routes for all levels. Chronicles and NeoLemmix remain Beta, but yet to meet an unbeatable level.

L2's golden-talisman ark ending remains unverified. Some Chronicles routes, engine behaviour and media are still under repair. Community solution coverage is incomplete, and some NeoLemmix levels need styles that are not bundled. Live cross-device synchronisation also remains unverified.

This is an unofficial fan project, with no affiliation with or endorsement from Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Download and get started

It supports iPhones and iPads with dynamic performance scaling. For Mac, you need an Apple silicon or Intel Mac running macOS 12.3 or later. Downloads are universal, Developer ID signed and notarised.

• New installation: the slim download is about 270 MB and includes essential music. You can add optional soundtrack libraries in the app.
  
• Existing installation: use Check for Updates. Automatic updates retain the full soundtrack. The signed update from 1.9.7 is about 3 MB.
  
• Full package: the full download includes the larger soundtrack collection and is about 2 GB.
  

For a fresh Mac installation, unzip the download and move Ultimate Lemmings.app to Applications.


Join the TestFlight beta for iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPhone Duo)

Join the TestFlight beta for Apple TV (in review, coming soon)
Download Ultimate Lemmings 2.1.x for Mac and read the release notes
Project source and documentation

If you're new, start with Classic and try a learning journey. If you're returning, switch a favourite level to Macintosh (1-bit) and take a moment to enjoy those pixels.

I'd love to hear what you think, see your screenshots, and find out which level looks best in one bit. For bug reports, please include the game or pack, level, artwork mode and what happened. Thank you for playing!

[Europasat43m.]

Thanks for all the work you are doing . Are u planning to release it on windows pcs?. I have a Mac laptop which i can test it on and it works amazing and also windows Pcs but I don't have an iPad.  and can you give me the invitation code for the Testflight app as i currently have an iphone.

Thanks a lot.

[UltimateLemmings]

Thanks for all the work you are doing . Are u planning to release it on windows pcs?. I have a Mac laptop which i can test it on and it works amazing and also windows Pcs but I don't have an iPad.  and can you give me the invitation code for the Testflight app as i currently have an iphone.

Thanks a lot.

Probably not going to port it to Windows and or Linux myself, but the code is open source. The link above is an open TestFlight link so it you are the first of 100 to sign up it's yours to test and keep!

[spaceagemeats]

exciting! have joined the test flight. will check the build out tonight.

[UltimateLemmings]

23 testers overnight!

[spaceagemeats]

so far VERY impressed with how this translated to iPad. i'm using classic controls on an older iPad Pro and have had no issues.

i suppose pausing the game when selecting a Lemming action was the only way to amount for tap controls vs. mouse? or is there a way to play in realtime?

[UltimateLemmings]

so far VERY impressed with how this translated to iPad. i'm using classic controls on an older iPad Pro and have had no issues.

i suppose pausing the game when selecting a Lemming action was the only way to amount for tap controls vs. mouse? or is there a way to play in realtime?

That's a concession to ease touch-play for new players. You can turn it off (as do I) in settings.

[UltimateLemmings]

76 testers on iOS, no crashes, no feedback (!). Can say that this is a fairly polished port by now!

[UltimateLemmings]

Join the TestFlight beta for Apple TV!

Also new updates for all platforms: stop looping levels when resuming a Golden Path journey, tons of engine optimisations, working global leaderboards and more!

[UltimateLemmings]

2.0.6 is out with smoother play

The playfield, the minimap and the skill panel draw faster. With Macintosh
artwork on a P3 display, the panel draw time fell from 3.9 ms to 1.65 ms.
Classic and NeoLemmix redraws between ticks reuse their colour-matched pixels.

A level result no longer pauses the game when you have a long play history.
The career leaderboard and the result screen reuse earlier analysis. A new
level starts without a full records write on the main thread. Cloud progress
no longer rewrites its local file when nothing has changed.

Saved records, attempts and leaderboards keep the same format. Earlier saves
load without changes.

Shining arrows

On an HDR display, Classic one-way arrows in Macintosh colour artwork catch the
light on their upper and left edges. The peak is 1.5 times SDR white, or less
when the screen has less headroom. SDR screens show the same pixels as before.

Menu music

Most launches play the Amiga or the Macintosh title theme. One launch in eight
plays the title theme from another version of the game. To turn the menu theme
off, clear Settings > Audio > Main menu: Play main theme.

The tracker music no longer crackles at startup. Before, each launch and focus
event restarted the fade-in of the menu theme.

Controller steps

Hold LT + LB / RB (Create + L1 / R1 on Apple TV) to scrub one tick at a time.
On a DualSense, slide a finger left or right on the touchpad to step back or
forward. Each step gives a light haptic tick. This works in Classic, The Tribes
and Chronicles on Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.

Pointer

The Amiga cross now shows around gameplay in every pointer style, in Classic,
The Tribes and Chronicles. Menus keep the system arrow.

Earlier 2.0.5 changes

• The death counter's skull no longer shrinks the gameplay status text.
• With Macintosh graphics, a lemming jumps into the centre of the drawn exit.
• Replays and saves do not change.
• In Chronicles, a Mole that touches steel follows the original game more
• closely. The bundled Chronicles routes keep their 2.0.4 results.

[spaceagemeats]

That's a concession to ease touch-play for new players. You can turn it off (as do I) in settings.

yup, found that in the options! honestly, I think the pause function is a smart move for new players. and I appreciate the option to toggle it off. really loving the experience on the iPad. its how I primarily play this now.

[UltimateLemmings]

That's a concession to ease touch-play for new players. You can turn it off (as do I) in settings.

yup, found that in the options! honestly, I think the pause function is a smart move for new players. and I appreciate the option to toggle it off. really loving the experience on the iPad. its how I primarily play this now.

Good to know! Really focusing on the iPad experience today as we love it too. iPad horizontal should be much closer to the macOS experience and UX than the mobile UX, so that's a big target for the next release!

[UltimateLemmings]

Ultimate Lemmings 2.2.2 - the most polished version yet!

Free zoom. Tiny biographies. Emergency skills. Safer saved games. A desk clock built by lemmings for the Duo (and widgets for everyone else)

2.2.2 brings all of that together, with improvements across Mac, iPhone, iPad, Duo and Apple TV.

Skill problems

• Basic 2× Zoom is free in Classic, The Tribes and Chronicles. No charges, no earning it first and no penalty for failing. Earned Superzoom stays separate.
  
• Mac wheel zoom follows your pointer smoothly, keeping the terrain you are looking at beneath it. At closer zoom levels, subtle sprite separation makes crowded playfields easier to read.
  
• Ridiculous speed adds an optional 25× tier. Enable it in Gameplay settings. It starts off. Your bridge can reach its regrettable conclusion with remarkable efficiency.
  
• Rare Bonus Skills give you an occasional extra use. Earn one for every ten distinct qualifying three-star clears, then spend at most one per attempt on an existing finite skill or an active Chronicles tool carrier. Earlier qualifying history counts too.
  

Bonus Skill clears can advance the campaign, but have separate records. They earn no consumables, career stars or achievements and stay out of online rankings. A spent charge stays spent through retry, rewind and recovery. Choose your emergency brick wisely.

Meet the Simlings!

Pause to inspect an individual in Classic, The Tribes or Chronicles. Each has a name, recorded assignments and one of 128 complete ten-word stories about a small life elsewhere. Just so you can feel more like a jerk when you blow them to pieces.

Owns seven smooth stones. One is reserved for overnight visitors.

Safe journey

• One Resume on Home follows the selected player or Hot Seat. Journey Map keeps the correct session, roster and turn, and lets you browse without starting play.
  
• Completion counts include campaign and Journey wins, counting each level once. This does not bypass campaign unlocks.
  
• Golden Path lessons now credit their original collections too. Existing saved wins receive that credit without another playthrough.
  
• New mobile Journey and playlist saves keep their exact place. Starting the same playlist again creates a fresh run.
  
• Solo and Hot Seat progress stay separate. Older Mac Hot Seat Journeys can recover recorded outcomes from retained saves or matching backups. Missing history cannot be invented.
  
• Safer recovery gives new mobile saves an initial backup and protects damaged saves or saves from a newer app version.
  

Cloud saves carry Journey positions, fan-level completion and Mac Tribes carry-over snapshots with their owning sessions. Cleared Journey queues stay cleared when an older device reconnects. Survivor chains receive better protection, and Chronicles remembers its tribes when you change language.

Sync work runs in the background. Incoming progress waits for a safe menu, and Hot Seat handovers stay paused until Ready. Tester Sync has one-button setup, survives relaunch and distinguishes its connection status from whether it is enabled. Background services also stay quiet when stored credentials are unavailable.

Every day I'm puzzling

• Original and Modern choose presentation while preserving your controls, controller bindings, interruption settings and assistance choices. New profiles start with restrained defaults.
  
• Clearer targeting uses distinct Modern pointer shapes for eligible assignments, unavailable assignments and empty space. Pointer arrows wrap cleanly at playfield edges, including NeoLemmix.
  
• Quieter results keep career accounting and reward explanations in optional review. Retry and Continue remain easy to reach, and gameplay badges fade with the menu.
  
• Honest help distinguishes checked level hints from General coaching and says when no level-specific hints are available.
  
• Short games offer optional five-level openings. Mac supports Classic and The Tribes, with separate survivor carry-over. Mobile supports Classic.
  
• Direct level access lets you start an available official level from its Play Insights row. Amiga Versus explains its two-connected-controllers requirement before play.
  

Rock hard controls and buttons

Shared buttons now use rock artwork drawn from the original Macintosh game. Gameplay controls have distinct faces, readable symbols and consistent states across the platforms. Refined 2× lettering and separately drawn 4× countdown numerals give the small details some attention too.

Navigation has a more consistent route Home, reachable Back controls on long pages and cancellation that returns to the page you came from. Reading pages have better paragraph spacing and line widths. Narrow menus keep button words intact at larger text sizes and stack actions when space runs short.

Mobile settings group related choices and show checked states. Cursor style, paused inspection and Hot Seat ghost visibility have explicit controls. Mac gameplay controls sit together at the top-right, clear of the score.

Polished like a stone

• Touch Pause acts on touch-down. Releasing that press keeps the game paused. Resume shows the frozen playfield before the next tick and discards time spent paused, including during fast play. If you have ever felt pause was unresponsive on iOS or TV, this fixes that!
  
• Overlapping lemmings are easier to browse with touch controls.
  
• Mobile replay controls keep the title compact, skills visible and camera movement within reach.
  
• Resizing cancels unfinished pinch and scroll gestures. Start and Ready still wait when the playfield returns.
  
• Apple TV controller selection is fixed, and Ready requires a fresh press before handing over play.
  

Time for lemmings

Desk Clock tells the time and your next calendar appointment as a desk ornament, with lemmings rebuilding the digits each minute. Built for the Duo tent pose, where it happens automatically you can also open it from the iPhone or iPad app, or add its widget on iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Allow calendar access to see the next event and a countdown. And yes, there's red night-vision mode for to avoid night-time blindness.

Duover for foldables

Duo has driven a wider round of layout improvements. Menus and gameplay use the full front display, arrange controls around camera cutouts and adapt between the outer screen and divided inner display. Every layout has an optimised view, making use of the sidebar on the front, book view, full view, laptop view. And of course the tent-pose for the desk clock!

The Librarian is in

The fan library groups learning levels, magazines and books, community collections, ports and remakes. Numbered packs stay together in order, while progress, favourites and saved runs keep their existing identities.

Four exact fan levels with impossible rescue conditions are omitted from bundled browsing and shuffle across the platforms. Original archives and imported copies remain available. Chronicles also receives further Mole timing and recovery fixes.

Worldwide leaderboards are now getting populated proper! If you share play counts, eligible records now join worldwide rankings automatically. Existing eligible records queue at launch, followed by new results and retained action replays. Public records include player initials, scores and action replays. Explicit record-sharing opt-outs remain respected. Game Center stays optional and separate.

Thank you all for supporting!

• Safer Mac count resets ask for confirmation with Back selected. Restore previous counts recovers earlier totals while keeping rescues earned afterwards.
  
• About has browsable release history, installed-version notes available offline, original-team and port credits, and supporter credits with an offline fallback. Original and recreated artwork are identified separately.
  
• Donate is available on Home and in About. Thank you supporters! You will be added automatically to credits on donation!
  
• The menu normally plays the Macintosh theme when available, with Amiga as the fallback and occasional alternative themes still in the mix.
  

Get 2.2.2

The Mac app supports Apple silicon and Intel on macOS 12.3 or later. Fresh installs have a slim download with optional soundtrack libraries. Automatic updates retain the full soundtrack.

iPhone, iPad and Duo require iOS 16 or later. Mobile and Apple TV builds continue through the existing TestFlight channels, with Apple processing and Beta Review determining external availability. The AltStore Classic source is available for iPhone and iPad.

Classic and The Tribes retain their Complete classifications. Chronicles and NeoLemmix remain Beta, with their documented content and engine limits. Mobile Journey playback remains Classic-only. Mid-level checkpoints and ordinary playlist queues stay local. Physical-device, accessibility, translation and live-sync testing continue.

Thank you to everyone who has played, reported a problem, offered an idea or supported the project. The care in this release reaches from saved journeys to the face of a single stone button. I hope it makes your next evening with these little people a better one.

They still cannot be trusted near a cliff. We have made the controls clearer.

Download Ultimate Lemmings 2.2.2 for Mac
Join the iOS open Test Flight beta for iPhone, Duo, iPad - Over 200 testers!!
Join the iOS open Test Flight beta for tvOS
AltStore Classic source