Lemmings (video game)

Lemmings is a 1991 puzzle-strategy video game developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis for the Amiga. It was later ported to numerous other platforms. The game was programmed by Russell Kay, Mike Dailly and David Jones, and was inspired by a simple animation that Dailly created while experimenting with Deluxe Paint.

The objective of the game is to guide a group of anthropomorphised lemmings through a number of obstacles to a designated exit. In any given level, the player must save a specified number or percentage of the lemmings in order to advance. To this end, the player must decide how to assign limited quantities of eight different skills to individual lemmings, allowing them to alter the landscape and/or their own behaviour so that the entire group can reach the exit safely.

Lemmings was one of the best-received video games of the early 1990s. It was the second-highest-rated game in the history of Amstrad Action, and was considered the eighth-greatest game of all time by Next Generation in 1996. Lemmings is also one of the most widely ported video games, and is estimated to have sold around 20 million copies between its various ports. The popularity of the game also led to the creation of several other Lemmings video-games, remakes and spin-offs, and has also inspired similar games. Despite its success, Lemmings lost considerable popularity by the late 1990s, which was attributed in part to the slow pace of gameplay compared to video games of later generations.