JacobHow long did you use to spend sitting in front of a PC or NES playing the classic Lemmings? Don't lie. That's right, countless hours.
Well, prepare to do it all over again in the open-source game Pingus.
Pingus is not just a Lemmings clone, it is a complete redesign from the ground up. New levels, new action commands, and the entire theme based on penguins is what this game is made up of.
The game starts you out with a basic storyline, and then drops you right onto Tutorial Island, with 22 full levels. The first few levels will remind you instantly of Lemmings (let's go!), but then you come across some new levels with new action commands to give the lem... err, Pingus, such as a jump command.
After completing the tutorial mode, the game abruptly ends, stating that the rest of the game is to come in another installment. However, that is not all that you are able to play. Along with the tutorial levels, over 250 levels are included with the game. While you cannot access these directly, and some levels are unplayable in their current state, you can open them with the level editor to edit them or play them as you see fit. The stored levels are available in /usr/share/games/pingus/levels on a standard Linux install.
Did I just say level editor? Yes, this awesome game comes with one, and it is a full-featured editor. You can create entire maps for the penguins to run on. In fact, the game was made with it.
Along with the game's excellently designed levels and seamless backgrounds and images, it also has a soundtrack. The music is somewhat reminiscent of music from the Lemmings games, and doesn't seem to get annoying.
The game does have its downsides however. One of them is its obnoxious CPU usage. On the level editor and map screens, your CPU usage may spike up a bit, even though the game appears to be not doing anything. While a minor flaw, it is still a bit of an annoyance when the laptop fan decides to kick on high when you least expect it.
Another small flaw it has is the fact that the music does not loop. If you take too long on a level, the music will just cut out and leave you in silence, only to be scared by the sudden revving up of your CPU fan.
Despite these flaws, I still highly recommend downloading this game by any means necessary. After all, who doesn't like telling mindless penguins what to do, even if it means killing them?
http://pingus.seul.org/
