Lemmings is a puzzle-strategy video game originally developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis for the Amiga in 1991 and later ported for numerous other platforms.

The objective of the game is to guide a group of anthropomorphised lemmings through a number of obstacles to a designated exit.

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.

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.

[19] Levels include a variety of obstacles that prevent lemmings from reaching the exit, such as large drops, booby traps and pools of lava.

Bombers explode after a five-second timer, destroying themselves and any destructible landscape in close proximity, though not damaging other lemmings or traps.

[18] While the player is able to pause the game to inspect the level and status of the lemmings, skills can only be assigned in real-time.

[25] Each player is presented with their own view of the same map (on a vertically split screen), can only give orders to their own lemmings (green or blue), and has their own base.

[26] The inspiration for gameplay came as a result of a simple animated character sprite in an 8×8 pixel box created by Dailly using Deluxe Paint[26] as part of development for Walker, then envisioned as a sequel to Blood Money.

Allowing the creatures to move across the landscape was based on a Salamander weapon concept for Blood Money and demonstrated with the animations.

DMA Design initially wanted to use a null-modem connection between two machines to allow competitive play, but ended up using the ability of the Amiga to have two mouse pointer devices usable at the same time and thus created the split-screen mode.

Psygnosis therefore asked Tim Wright to replace the offending tracks; he often used arrangements and reworkings of classical and traditional music to avoid copyright problems.

[26][27] Within a year of its release, the game had been ported to Atari ST, Sinclair Spectrum, PC and SNES.

User levels can be constructed from pre-rendered objects and distributed by uploading them to a PlayStation-specific Lemmings online community.

[24][29] The soundtrack also marks the final video game score created by longtime composer Tim Follin after he announced his retirement from the industry in mid-2005.

More Lemmings, originally released for the Amiga in 1991 both as a data disk or standalone game, added five varying difficulties – Tame, Crazy, Wild, Wicked and Havoc – each with 20 new levels.

[39] The expansion was also ported to Acorn Archimedes, Atari ST, DOS, Macintosh, and SAM Coupé, and the levels were made available with the Game Boy Color, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation and Sega Mega Drive versions of Lemmings.

Dan Slingsby of CU Amiga found the game addictive, calling the puzzles "ingenious",[38] and Peter Lee of Amiga Action praised the quality and difficulty of the levels;[41] Stuart Campbell of Amiga Power was disappointed by the lack of fixes from the original game, and Ed Ricketts of ST Format criticized the difficulty gradient of the levels and the price of the expansion, but both ultimately gave positive reviews nonetheless.

[80] David Sears of Compute!, in his review of Lemmings for the PC, stated that "perhaps Psygnosis has tapped into the human instinct for survival in formulating this perfect blend of puzzle, strategy, and action.

"[83] Computer Gaming World stated that "Not since Tetris has this reviewer been so addicted to, or completely fascinated with, a series of challenging puzzles ... follow the crowd and get Lemmings".

[85] The game was reviewed in 1991 in Dragon by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column.

[87] In the Finnish magazine Mikrobitti, Jukka Tapanimäki gave the Amiga and DOS versions of Lemmings 84 points of 100.

[92] That same year, PC Gamer UK named it the 25th-best computer game of all time, calling it "a seminal title.

[103] The intellectual property (IP) of Lemmings stayed with the initial publisher Psygnosis, who were acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 1993.

General game concepts have been included in the open source Pingus, where the player is required to safely guide penguins across landscapes using a similar array of tools.

[112] On 29 June 2010, Mobile 1UP reported that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe had presented them with a cease-and-desist letter, forcing them to halt development of the port.

[113] In April 2011, Mobile 1UP has released a re-worked version of the work done in 2010 with a prehistoric setting (new artwork, sound effects, music and levels) under the name Caveman, available for the iOS and webOS platforms.

[115] Lemmings has also been called a predecessor of the modern real-time strategy (RTS) video game genre.

[116] Blizzard Entertainment developer Bob Fitch said that part of the inspiration for the first Warcraft game, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, was based on developing a competitive multiplayer RTS that combined elements of The Lost Vikings (which he had worked on) and Lemmings; Fitch said "We just went, 'Oh it's so cool when you see lots of Lemmings all over the place.

When readers asked if this was deliberate, Pratchett responded: "Merely because the red army can fight, dig, march and climb and is controlled by little icons?