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.
> ... 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.
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
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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
> ... 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!
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
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.
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.
https://ablakey.ca/
Nice! Your site is impressive and your achievements even more so.
the base plates lighting up showing history of where the robot travelled is a fun detail
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.
Reminds me of a similar game I had as a kid (Dweebs 2: The New Breed).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82cqmq6quXI
I recently put lemmings into some clinic management software I've been working on as a software egg.
https://postimg.cc/gxvZHbgG
C64 demo "Rodents in the Attic" (2026): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbXIdK3o3NU
Explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ1atMUOUMU
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
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.
On android they fall down along the side all the way to the bottom
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.
Funny how they keep hopping on a toggling horizontal scrollbar there at the bottom.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Nothing good comes from vib...
Ok, this is awesome.
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.
Really fun to play around with! Good job!
Super funny idea ! But it does not follow the scroll down on Safari
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.
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)
I love that they can also walk on the text headings
So cute!
this made my day
Awesome. Loved the originals.
this is awesome
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.
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?