The closest games to Lemmings are Lemmings (2006), Pikmin 4 and The Incredible Machine. Below, 10 picks with the reason for each — what carries over from Lemmings, and what does not.
Lemmings gives you a stream of creatures walking off a cliff and a fixed set of jobs to hand out — digger, blocker, builder, climber — with no way to steer any of them directly. The puzzle is entirely about where you spend a limited number of roles, and the pressure comes from the fact that the walking never stops. It is a real-time puzzle game that predates the genre having a name.
Lemmings released on the PC & Modern Multi-Platform. The list below is not restricted to that console — a recommendation is only useful if you can actually play it, so it spans generations and platforms.
The PSP remake, and the cleanest way to play the original levels today.
The idea grown up: a crowd you direct rather than assign, with jobs by colour.
The other great indirect-control puzzler — build the contraption, then watch it fail.
Arrows on a grid, mice that never stop moving. The same panic in miniature.
Hand out orders to a line of wind-up toys and hope the line survives.
Physics puzzles where you design the solution and then watch it hold or not.
A modern crowd-routing puzzler, and the closest thing to Lemmings anyone has made in years.
If the appeal was the pressure of something arriving whether you are ready or not.
Same era, same studio lineage, small creatures and comic violence.
The other Bullfrog classic where you shape the world instead of the people in it.
Several of these have their own page here: games like ChuChu Rocket, games like Tetris.
Lemmings (2006). The PSP remake, and the cleanest way to play the original levels today.
Lemmings (2006), Pikmin 4 and The Incredible Machine are the closest. The full list of Lemmings similar games is on this page — 10 of them, each with the reason it is here rather than a genre tag that happens to match.
The picks above span platforms rather than sticking to the PC, because the thing worth copying about Lemmings is not a property of the hardware. The PC list further down is the place to go for more from that library.
Because the thing you liked about Lemmings is not a property of the hardware. Restricting the list to one console would drop most of the good answers, so the picks above span platforms and eras. If you specifically want more from that library, the PC list further down is the place to start.
By hand, one game at a time, on what the source game actually does — its pacing, its movement, its difficulty, its tone. Genre tags alone put Lemmings next to games that feel nothing like it, so they are not the basis for this list. Each pick carries the reason it is here so you can judge it yourself.
No. The whole list is on this page, free, with no sign-in and no email. We earn a small affiliate commission if you buy through a retailer link, which is what pays for the site.
If you already know what kind of answer you want, these are the same list cut by genre — and each one says what it leaves out as well as what it includes:
More from the PC & Modern Multi-Platform library, each with its own recommendations page: