Lemmings

Hundreds of little green-haired creatures march toward certain doom, and the only thing standing between them and the abyss is you. Lemmings on the Super Nintendo brings one of the most ingenious puzzle ideas of its time to the Nintendo console and proves that a simple premise can grow into an utterly addictive game.

The principle is touchingly simple and devilishly clever at the same time: the lemmings hurl themselves forward with no instinct for self-preservation, and your task is to lead a sufficient number of them to the exit. On their own they do nothing clever, but you can assign them roles — diggers, bridge builders, blockers, climbers, or the one who sacrifices himself in an explosion. From these few abilities you assemble solutions to ever more fiendish levels.

The beauty of Lemmings lies in the tension between planning and time. The creatures do not stop, so you must think ahead and often improvise when a single badly issued command sends the whole procession to its doom. The levels gradually add traps, differences in height, and the need for precise timing, until an unassuming game becomes a genuine test of logic and a cool head.

On the SNES the game benefits from colorful graphics, clear controls, and catchy music that burrows into your memory. Controlling it with a gamepad instead of a mouse takes some getting used to, but once you master the rhythm of switching between roles, play flows smoothly. Every solved level brings that peculiar kind of satisfaction where you feel clever precisely because the game was, for a moment, cleverer than you.

Lemmings became one of the most influential puzzle games ever and was ported to practically every platform of its era. Its simple yet endlessly variable mechanics are still cited today as a textbook example of great game design.

Why play: A brilliantly simple logic classic where you rescue suicidal little creatures and every solved level tastes like a small victory.