Lemmings are cute, but not offensively cute little creatures that drop from a trapdoor at the top of the screen. As soon as they hit the floor, they start walking. They have no sense for the surreal beauty of their surroundings, nor for the dangers that lurk beneath it. They just keep on walking till they meet an obstacle, which will simply make them revert their direction, or till they fall of some cliff.

Left to their own device, they will, as mentioned, fall off a cliff, be smashed under a press, dissolved in an acid pool, or fall prey to even more sadistic contraptions. Or they just might find themselves in a pit, wandering aimlessly, endlessly, to and fro.

To prevent these dire fates, you can assign roles to individual lemmings. Blockers just stand there and function as obstacles. Diggers can dig downwards through soft, miners through hard surfaces. Bashers do the same horizontally. There are about a dozen such functions.

Your goal, of course, is to lead as many lemmings as possible (you have to reach a quota) through the exit in the assigned time and move on to the next level. You will be given a codeword so you can continue playing where you left off, there are no savegames. (That goes for the DOS and Amiga versions, in the Windows version there are, and most certainly in the Mac version too). You can choose four difficulty levels (fun, tricky, taxing, mayhem) which are actually four different games.

The graphics of Lemmings are a gem of classical game art. The lemmings are only a dozen or so pixels tall, yet their green hair flies, and the blocker's foot taps. Backgrounds are eerily beautiful, they show what can be done with 32 colors. The music adds some irony to the game.

Lemmings are maybe the greatest gift the Amiga ever gave to the gaming world in general. The game was ported to most platforms of the time, and sequels continue to be created. Psygnosis, the original publisher, was bought up in 1993 by Sony, who thus now hold the rights for Lemmings.

NOTE: Project has been discontinued.