I played this game for dozens of hours with my dad growing up and seeing and playing with these animations is one of those times when nostalgia is so overwhelming and unexpected that I feel physically dizzy. If the animation had the sounds of lemmings dying when they fell from too high[1] I might have been hospitalized. Good work.
Haha yea I pulled the sprites from the original game, I was thinking the same, an umbrella or die, it’d be a good way to artificially increase web analytics, maybe a message bubble
> ... is one of those times when nostalgia is so overwhelming
1991, Psygnosis (of course), Commodore Amiga (double of course!): my little brother was 9 y/o at the time and we were teenagers and we'd play Lemmings like crazy on our Amiga.
My little brother couldn't speak english yes but he'd imitate the "oh, nooooo" sentence Lemmings you'd "suicide" would make.
More than three decades later my brother is still nicknamed "Lem" after "Lemmings" and that's how we call him. And about two decades ago, he gave his consulting company a name sounding like "Lemmings" (spelling slightly different). He's still "Lem" and he still has got that company.
One of the best features of the Amiga (and perhaps Atari ST?) was the two player version. A mouse in each of the joystick sockets, each player starts from opposing ends of the map in a splitscreen view, having to get to the other and obviously not interfering with the opposition's efforts. Ahem.
An evil game. Such fun. I wish they'd expanded on it more...
I did something on my site recently like that where you can click a hexagon and it turns into a robot and starts SLAM mapping the page, navigating around text elements carefully.
Were you initially surprised by how easy it was to get exact block size of individual characters and not just entire dom elements? That’s the part I thought was going to be the most difficult.
Interesting experiments and differences between the browsers.
Using the test:
(async () => {
const sleep = (ms) => new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, ms));
for (let i = 0; i < 200; i++) {
__walker.add();
await sleep(10);
}
})();
From the JavaScript console, on both Chrome and Safari.
The animation is _way_ smoother on Chrome, but scrolling on that page becomes really painful.
Safari, on the other hand, uses a lot more CPU to do the animation, and the FP of that animation drops dramatically as you change the number of lemmings from 10 -> 50 -> 100 -> 200. However scrolling the page remains smooth the entire time.
Okay, this reminds me of an game from a similar time period where there would be these two tanks firing at each other from across the screen, one at a time. Does anybody remember that and what it was called?
I remember having Lemmings and messing with the animation sprites from the game--I don't recall if they were saved in a bmp format or if it required a tool to extract. I'd try to recolor their hair or change their outfits pixel by pixel, but there were a lot of animations and a lot of frames. I always wanted to use them to build a Tetris/Lemmings hybrid game (the two games with the best music), but never got around to it.
Cool! Have you also tried setting maximum display size in accessibility settings on android? I lost most of them at the stairs and the rest fell into the walls. Is that supposed to happen? None reached the bottom. That said, this is pretty cool.
I enjoy putting the lemming in the margin on the bottom of the viewport at the left or right side then scrolling down such that the lemming plummets. Then, scrolling up, I can make it bounce up as if it is on a trampoline. Very funny.
I vibe-ported xpenguins[1] to Web[2] recently, can be used as bookmarklet and let run on any website. No original Lemmings in that one however, only the knockoff penguins.
I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly but there used to be a site called html5lemmings (or something similar) where you could play a few levels of the game. This was before modern web applications and things were still mostly server side rendered with minimal javascript. The demo was quite impressive. I don't know if it's still there. Couldn't find it with a quick search.
This sent me on a lemmings hunt and I found someone porting all of the lemmings games and community levels to Mac - https://github.com/ErikVeland/Lemmings
Right, I thought the same. Construct it such that a Lemming falling down from the top will have to clear every level to the bottom instead of just falling past all of them.
As the first paragraph says (“Drag one to carry it”) you can move them around to put them on/in the parts that you want to test their interactions with.
Other than respawning them as you scroll around, so one starts in an appropriate place as a test comes into view, and resetting them automatically, perhaps on a timer, there probably isn't a better way to properly show it off than that.
Cute, but it would look nicer if the walkers were... you know, actually walking? Ok, might be hard to do with CSS to be fair, I don't know enough about CSS animation to judge that.
EDIT: works in Chrome and Firefox, doesn't work in Edge (on Linux - yeah, I know almost nobody uses that) for some reason...
Could be, yeah, didn't look deep into it. Just speaking from my experience with the flashy websites doing impressive demos usually starting to lag fairly soon.
That kind of misses what made Lemmings fun though.
Without digging and building stairs and parachutes,
it is only Lemmings in name, not in spirit. Also,
exploding lemmings - this can probably be done via
CSS animations.
I played this game for dozens of hours with my dad growing up and seeing and playing with these animations is one of those times when nostalgia is so overwhelming and unexpected that I feel physically dizzy. If the animation had the sounds of lemmings dying when they fell from too high[1] I might have been hospitalized. Good work.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_RmG9WB4BE
Haha yea I pulled the sprites from the original game, I was thinking the same, an umbrella or die, it’d be a good way to artificially increase web analytics, maybe a message bubble
Agreed - but what is shown on the webpage here, is not really lemmings.
Duh
I played this for dozens of hours with my dad yelling helpfully over my shoulder. I still have the floppy in storage, but with no drive to read it.
But you can play it here! https://archive.org/details/lemmings_original_ms-dos_201705
> ... is one of those times when nostalgia is so overwhelming
1991, Psygnosis (of course), Commodore Amiga (double of course!): my little brother was 9 y/o at the time and we were teenagers and we'd play Lemmings like crazy on our Amiga.
My little brother couldn't speak english yes but he'd imitate the "oh, nooooo" sentence Lemmings you'd "suicide" would make.
More than three decades later my brother is still nicknamed "Lem" after "Lemmings" and that's how we call him. And about two decades ago, he gave his consulting company a name sounding like "Lemmings" (spelling slightly different). He's still "Lem" and he still has got that company.
Oh noooooooo!
One of the best features of the Amiga (and perhaps Atari ST?) was the two player version. A mouse in each of the joystick sockets, each player starts from opposing ends of the map in a splitscreen view, having to get to the other and obviously not interfering with the opposition's efforts. Ahem.
An evil game. Such fun. I wish they'd expanded on it more...
That’s pretty sweet.
I did something on my site recently like that where you can click a hexagon and it turns into a robot and starts SLAM mapping the page, navigating around text elements carefully.
Were you initially surprised by how easy it was to get exact block size of individual characters and not just entire dom elements? That’s the part I thought was going to be the most difficult.
the base plates lighting up showing history of where the robot travelled is a fun detail
https://ablakey.ca/
Nice! Your site is impressive and your achievements even more so.
I recently put lemmings into some clinic management software I've been working on as a software egg.
https://postimg.cc/gxvZHbgG
That's beautiful! I hope it doesn't measure and chart the patients ^-^
Interesting experiments and differences between the browsers.
Using the test: (async () => { const sleep = (ms) => new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, ms)); for (let i = 0; i < 200; i++) { __walker.add(); await sleep(10); } })();
From the JavaScript console, on both Chrome and Safari.
The animation is _way_ smoother on Chrome, but scrolling on that page becomes really painful.
Safari, on the other hand, uses a lot more CPU to do the animation, and the FP of that animation drops dramatically as you change the number of lemmings from 10 -> 50 -> 100 -> 200. However scrolling the page remains smooth the entire time.
Okay, this reminds me of an game from a similar time period where there would be these two tanks firing at each other from across the screen, one at a time. Does anybody remember that and what it was called?
Scorched Earth
Awesome, brings back memories of playing lemmings on my Amiga in the early 90s
I remember having Lemmings and messing with the animation sprites from the game--I don't recall if they were saved in a bmp format or if it required a tool to extract. I'd try to recolor their hair or change their outfits pixel by pixel, but there were a lot of animations and a lot of frames. I always wanted to use them to build a Tetris/Lemmings hybrid game (the two games with the best music), but never got around to it.
Bmp
Cute :) It has a couple of zoom bugs on mobile, something like
html { overflow-x: clip; touch-action: manipulation; }
should fix them!
Oh awesome thank you, I will add this in
Cool! Have you also tried setting maximum display size in accessibility settings on android? I lost most of them at the stairs and the rest fell into the walls. Is that supposed to happen? None reached the bottom. That said, this is pretty cool.
You can make the lemmings jump on mobile by scrolling down and up as a fast movement. Like catapulting/pushing them up
C64 demo "Rodents in the Attic" (2026): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbXIdK3o3NU
Explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ1atMUOUMU
I enjoy putting the lemming in the margin on the bottom of the viewport at the left or right side then scrolling down such that the lemming plummets. Then, scrolling up, I can make it bounce up as if it is on a trampoline. Very funny.
I vibe-ported xpenguins[1] to Web[2] recently, can be used as bookmarklet and let run on any website. No original Lemmings in that one however, only the knockoff penguins.
[1] http://xpenguins.seul.org/ and updated at https://github.com/Grumbel/xpenguins-ng
[2] https://xpenguins-web.github.io/
Haha that’s cool, need to hunt sheep.exe
Just a note for you: Nothing at all shows up for someone who has prefers reduced motion on.
when i opened this thread my first thought was that i want pingus characters, not lemmings.
it's also awesome that you took over maintenance of xpenguins since you are the original creator the characters.
way to go!
I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly but there used to be a site called html5lemmings (or something similar) where you could play a few levels of the game. This was before modern web applications and things were still mostly server side rendered with minimal javascript. The demo was quite impressive. I don't know if it's still there. Couldn't find it with a quick search.
dhtml lemmings
https://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/
That's the one! Thanks.
Reminds me of a similar game I had as a kid (Dweebs 2: The New Breed).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82cqmq6quXI
Funny how they keep hopping on a toggling horizontal scrollbar there at the bottom.
Lemmings JS + CSS Animation
Took me a moment to realise I could pick them up and place them, on things and in things.
Thank you for bringing this to life.
This sent me on a lemmings hunt and I found someone porting all of the lemmings games and community levels to Mac - https://github.com/ErikVeland/Lemmings
Nothing good comes from vib...
Ok, this is awesome.
On android they fall down along the side all the way to the bottom
Love it!
It is unfortunate that the scenery is positioned in such a way that lemmings end up falling by the side all the way to the bottom of the screen.
Perhaps it would look better if you removed the padding from <body> and added more pits to the scenery.
Right, I thought the same. Construct it such that a Lemming falling down from the top will have to clear every level to the bottom instead of just falling past all of them.
As the first paragraph says (“Drag one to carry it”) you can move them around to put them on/in the parts that you want to test their interactions with.
Other than respawning them as you scroll around, so one starts in an appropriate place as a test comes into view, and resetting them automatically, perhaps on a timer, there probably isn't a better way to properly show it off than that.
love it. I did build a html-in-canvas version (https://github.com/VorticonCmdr/lemmings) for fun and I love how creative other people get
This is fantastic.
Cute, but it would look nicer if the walkers were... you know, actually walking? Ok, might be hard to do with CSS to be fair, I don't know enough about CSS animation to judge that.
EDIT: works in Chrome and Firefox, doesn't work in Edge (on Linux - yeah, I know almost nobody uses that) for some reason...
They are...
Thank you for making this. It was really fun and a really pleasant start to my day.
Super funny idea ! But it does not follow the scroll down on Safari
A tribute to Psygnosis, just for fun
Psygnosis were the publisher, DMA Design were the developers (you might know them from their other big game: Grand Theft Auto)
Really fun to play around with! Good job!
mad impressive imo, spawned like 50+ ppl and still running smooth (although must say I have a monster rig).
And I overenjoyed throwing lil marios around
The tick rate isn’t high so should be able to have thousands
Could be, yeah, didn't look deep into it. Just speaking from my experience with the flashy websites doing impressive demos usually starting to lag fairly soon.
I love that they can also walk on the text headings
Awesome. Loved the originals.
So cute!
this made my day
That kind of misses what made Lemmings fun though.
Without digging and building stairs and parachutes, it is only Lemmings in name, not in spirit. Also, exploding lemmings - this can probably be done via CSS animations.
this is awesome
Oh, this game brings back memories
Now that's what I'm talking about.
Is there anyway to get the classic version of Lemmings (on Amiga/PC) playable on the Switch?
There's a homebrew port of DOS Lemmings to 3DS, with an LLM it might not be too hard to get working.
https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/Lemmings_for_3DS
https://github.com/esoteric-programmer/lemmings_3ds