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More lemming action this time with new skills and obstacles for them to overcome. Three islands to adventure on each featuring a different tribe of Lemmings to save. They are as follows, Classic Lemmings, Egyptian Lemmings, or the Shadow Lemmings.
The story of lemmings 3 is that your lemmings have arrived in an ark on a new land (after their old land blew up or something) and have split into three tribes. Each tribe has taken over a different area and they are all happy and keen to get their tribes re-established. But there are problems in the future for the little guys, as the promised land they want to occupy is filled with giants and, being basically stupid, they can't eradicate these inhabitants without a little help from a higher power. Thats where you come in of course.
Your mission, should you choose to except it, will be to lead these cute, but helpless, lemmings through all the obstacles until they have claimed full possesion of the land while keeping as many alive as you can. As I always say, nothing wrong with a nice little story like this one to add character to a game. Full marks for coming up with a plausible reason for saving the lemmings.
Gameplay is pretty easy to grasp. Controls are mouse- based and so everything is just a click away.
There are three skills any lemming can perform, anytime and they are linked to the first 3 buttons at the bottom of the screen. These are the walker (clicking it on a lemming will make him change direction), the stopper (do I really need to explain this one?), and the jumper (see last brackets).
Then there are several other skills that have to be picked up and then used with the fourth button or thrown away with the fifth button (only the lemming that picked up the skill can use it). These include things like bricks, wall climbing suckers, diggers, swimmers and weapons for dealing with the bad guys. A big part of the gameplay is planning in advance how you are going to get the skills you need without getting stuck later on. This makes the gameplay that much better.
(One thing you should note is that any skill you use will only come into effect at the end of the brick the lemming is current walking on which means you can be very precise when building, or really mess things up if you're not careful. You have been warned.)
The challenge level is really tricky. There are about thirty levels for each of the three tribes and while the first few levels are easy it quickly settles down to a tough grind for even the most hardcore puzzler. None of the levels are particularly big and if you get your planning straight, time limits will not be a problem (of course getting your planning straight is the problem).
In terms of gameplay, the most similar game I can think of, is "The Lost Vikings" (also avaliable on CGA, check it out). There you also have to take control of an individual and send him ahead to do something that will help the others while planning your next move. You can pick up things and use them and you have bad guys to strategically deal with just like in this game. If you like the gameplay of "Vikings" you'll love Lemmings 3. If you don't know what on earth "vikings" is then you'll still like the gameplay because its simple enough to get the hang of but hard enough to really challenge you. Not for the feeble minded puzzler.
For DOS/Windows (via DOSBox) [*Please review compatibility/platform sections]
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