If you thought the original puzzle design was tricky, Oh No! More Lemmings arrived in 1991 to prove that DMA Design was just getting warmed up with its brand of rodents-in-peril tortures. It gives you zero new abilities to work with, handed back the exact same eight skills, and proceeded to build 100 of the most uncompromising levels ever printed to floppy disk.

No new tools, just 100 levels designed to break your brain

The immediate temptation when looking at an expansion pack is to ask what new weapons or mechanics got added to the toolkit. DMA Design Limited gave you absolutely nothing new in the toolbox: your green-haired charges still only climb, float, explode, block, build, bash, mine, and dig. Instead of expanding the mechanics, the designers focused entirely on raw, unsparing level architecture. Every trick you learned in the original game is turned against you here, usually within the first dozen stages.

The game splits its 100 levels across five difficulty ratings with 20 stages each: Tame, Crazy, Wild, Wicked, and Havoc. "Tame" acts as a complete misnomer for anyone who played the original, serving mostly as a brief warm-up where single builders or bashers solve entire screens. Once you step into "Crazy", the game strips away your safety margin. You are routinely handed minimal skill allocations, strict save-percentages, and tight time limits that leave no room for trial and error.

A crowded Lemmings level in Oh No! More Lemmings — The brick and crystal tilesets introduced a sleeker, darker style to the familiar bridge-building gameplay.

Playing the puzzle levels feels less like guiding livestock and more like disarming a bomb with pair of tweezers. Where the original allowed for loose, improvised solutions on early tiers, this follow-up demands pixel-perfect placement from the opening seconds. If you drop a builder bridge one frame late, the entire line marches off a sharp drop into liquid nitrogen, forcing a quick hit of the nuke key to restart.

New audio and fresh tile sets hide devious traps

While the mechanics remained untouched, the presentation received a complete overhaul by publisher Psygnosis Limited. The original game's public domain nursery rhymes and classic tunes were swapped out for an entirely original soundtrack composed by Tim Wright and Brian Johnston. Played through a Sound Blaster card, the synth riffs and upbeat electronic tracks gave the floppy release a crisp, distinct voice, while the AdLib FM synthesis held up remarkably well on budget hardware.

Visuals got an equally substantial upgrade with five fresh environmental themes:

Bubble: Bright, slippery pink spheres and rubbery obstacles that obscure narrow drops.
Rock/Ice: Jagged blue glaciers and slick stone ledges that shatter mining angles.
Brick: Dark, industrial blockwork packed with hidden trapdoors and deadly hydraulic presses.
Snow: Soft drifts and ice pillars where diggers cut through terrain far faster than expected.
Grid/Crayon: Surreal, high-contrast geometric layouts that make calculating landing spots tricky.

Lemmings navigating a perilous platform layout — Narrow drops and limited builder quantities require meticulous timing on every single staircase.

These graphics sets were not merely cosmetic tweaks. The new terrain art altered wall thickness and slope angles just enough to throw off muscle memory from 1991. A wall that looked solid in the old dirt tileset might turn out to be a thin facade in the brick style, causing your miner to break through into open air and drop twenty lemmings to their deaths before you can assign a floater umbrella.

Where Oh No! More Lemmings turns cruel

The difficulty curve in this stand-alone pack does not gently ramp up; it spikes like a heart monitor during a horror movie. In levels like "Mind the Step" or "POLE POSITION" in the Havoc rank, you are often given zero leeway on lost personnel. If a level requires saving 99% of your horde and hands you exactly two builders and one blocker, a single misclick means total failure. That precision requirement is where the original mouse controls can occasionally irritate modern players, as selecting one specific lemming out of a tightly clustered crowd remains an exercise in tension.

Detailed puzzle map with complex staircases and traps — Later levels in the Havoc tier leave zero room for error, requiring exact skill timing.

Despite the frustration of replaying three-minute setup sequences just to fail a precise bridge placement at the finish line, the level design remains remarkably fair in its logic. There are no invisible trap triggers or random element calculations. Every piece of lethal machinery operates on predictable cycles, and every wall responds consistently to bashers and diggers. When a solution finally clicks, executing it feels incredibly satisfying, making the brutal Wicked and Havoc tiers well worth pushing through.

You can play Oh No! More Lemmings free in your browser right now

If you want to test your strategy skills against some of the tightest level design of the DOS era, you can launch the full Oh No! More Lemmings MS-DOS game directly on this page. There is nothing to install and no complex configuration needed. It loads straight into your web browser, complete with full mouse controls and authentic sound card audio support.

For anyone who loves retro strategy puzzles, this expansion still delivers a serious challenge. Start with the Tame levels to get a feel for the mouse cursor timing, but do not get comfortable. The moment you step into the Crazy tier, the game drops the gloves, handing you a frantic, brilliant puzzle test that rewards quick thinking and absolute precision.

How Oh No! More Lemmings is played — the keys the game listens to, grouped by what they do.

Movement
Action
Interface

Highlighted keys are mapped — hover or tap one to see what it does.

Control device is chosen via F4 on the main menu. Mouse is the primary recommended control method.

Players' controls

Touch and gamepad controls

The on-screen keyboard and gamepad mapping the browser player uses on a phone, a tablet or a controller, as opposed to the real keys above. $PRO members make their own in the player and share them here; anyone can pick one to play with.

Make your own touch controlsPRO

1Open the editorSign in below, then pick what to make. The game starts with the editor open over it.
2Place your keysAdd keys and drag them where your thumbs rest, or map a controller's buttons. Test plays the game with them; Save keeps them, and you play with them from then on.
3Share themShare them right after saving in the game, or name and share them here. Players vote, and the best become this game's controls for everyone.

Go PRO See how it works Sign in+20 XP for sharing · +50 XP if yours become the game's own

Choose what you play with. Use picks it, and the game starts with it next time.