Lemmings 2 - The Tribes

I remember that moment when I first saw those little green-haired creatures plummeting from a height into an abyss — and I frantically clicked the umbrella icon to save at least someone. It was 1993 and DMA Design, long before Grand Theft Auto, released the sequel to one of the best-selling puzzle games on PC.

Lemmings 2: The Tribes is a logic game where the player guides swarms of little lemmings through a series of traps, chasms, and obstacles to the goal — a rescue flag. Compared to the first game, themed worlds were added, or "tribes": instead of one generic world, you have dozens of thematically separated level sets, from Egyptian desert style through circus to medieval times. Each group carries its own visual identity and the atmosphere adapts accordingly.

The core gameplay remains the same as in the first installment — you assign roles to lemmings. One digs, another builds, a third sacrifices itself in an explosion. The second game significantly expanded the palette of available skills, which sounds great, but in practice it means the selection panel is so crowded with icons that it takes you a while to orient yourself. Under the pressure of a ticking timer, this adds a layer of stress that has nothing to do with logic. The levels themselves are designed with integrity — few are cheap or random; most have one elegant solution that hits you like a little epiphany.

What still works about the game is that basic feeling. Watching helpless lemmings march toward their doom while you desperately search for the right approach still has its appeal. The music — each thematic group has its own melody — has aged surprisingly well; for the time, it was remarkable sound design work. The graphics are charmingly dated; 256 colors worked wonders in 1993 and today it reads like a pixel art postcard. What aged worse is the lack of mid-level saving — having to work through an entire set piece by piece and then make a mistake at the end was normal back then; today it's just a source of well-deserved frustration.

If you loved the first game, you absolutely have to play the sequel — it's bigger, more colorful, and offers more content for longer hours. If you've never touched lemmings, you can easily start here. On oldgames.cz you can run it right in your browser, no installation, no DOSBox, no rummaging through drawers. Ten minutes and you'll understand why DMA Design built such a name for this series in the nineties.