It’s a story as old as time: lemmings are born, raised, and – at some point in their life cycle – decide to jump off a cliff along with their buddies in a spectacle of mass suicide that would put Jonestown to shame.  But here’s the thing – it’s just not true.  Knowing this, the fine folks at a research lab in Montana have spent millions to breed and race a suicidal strain of lemming, so that they can be raced to their death to settle a $20 bet.  We like to call this “science.”

Leaping Lemmings is a game that tasks players with guiding a group of lemmings from safety to suicide, maneuvering them past hungry eagles and through helpful food pellets along the way, all in an effort to be the team leader to run as many of his lemmings as he can off a cliff in the most spectacular way possible.

The gameplay itself is incredibly straightforward.  There are two eagles on the board – a red eagle named Ruby, and a blue eagle named Stephen Jr (see what they did there?).  Players will take turns rolling the dice to move the eagles from hunting area to hunting area, in search of tasty lemmings to snack on.

Once the eagles have been played, a movement card is flipped over with a number on it.  Players can each choose a single lemming from their team to move up to that number of hexes.  This is where the game gets strategic – do you move your lemming to a bush to hide from the eagle?  Do you move him on top of an opponent to keep them restrained, but open yourself up to potentially be lunch?  Or do you risk safety to try and earn a food pellet that could turn into victory points, or better yet, a favor that could let you bend the rules to your benefit?

The game is delightfully simple… until it’s not.

You see, the problem with Leaping Lemmings isn’t that it’s too simple, but that for a simple game it’s asking you to keep track of too much.  You can’t pass through tiles that are current hunting grounds, but those tiles are going to change every turn.  You can stack X number of lemmings on a regular tile, but Y number of lemmings on bush tile. Pellets can be collected and spent, but only when you move off their tile – not on.  You score bonus points for remaining moves when a lemming dives off a cliff, but since you don’t count your jump as a move, it’s all too easy to miscalculate by a point here and there in the midst of gameplay.  When an eagle eats, you need to flip the tile over, and then flip it back by spending a movement point on his next turn.  The list of fiddly little rules goes on and on.

The base mechanic here is solid and plenty of fun, but they extra rules they’ve layered on top of it seem to complicate things needlessly.  If you were to strip these elements away, Leaping Lemmings would be a perfect game for younger kids.  The theme is cute, the art is adorable, and the core concept is simple enough that anyone could grasp it.  But once you go beyond simply moving the eagles and playing movement cards, Leaping Lemmings manages to move a lot closer to the publisher’s recommendation of 13+.  There’s simply too much here for kids to keep track of.  Heck – for the light gameplay at its core, there was too much here for us grown-ups to keep track of too.

While the game is designed for 2-6 players, this is definitely a case of “the more, the merrier.”  Since every player you add brings an additional 10 lemmings into the game, the experience can get hectic pretty quickly – especially when you max out at the full 6.  When played with only two, the “take that!” gameplay elements, like stacking and feasting, didn’t happen nearly as often simply because there weren’t enough lemmings on the board at any one time.

And while the game doesn’t advertise itself as solo (in fact the company has a “solitaire suitability” rating on the box, and gives this game a lowly 2/9), I found that playing the game alone with a few rule twists managed to be just as much fun as group play.  For those interested, I simply put all of the Lemmings in play, moved one of each team per round, played the eagles as adversarially as possible, and tried to beat my own best score.  You could also set a point value to reach and use that for a victory condition instead, though with so many Lemmings in play, you’ll probably want to set that pretty high.

With fiercely competitive gameplay once you get a good number of players are involved, Leaping Lemmings would be an easy recommendation to make for those looking for a good casual group experience around the tabletop.  But with so many little nitpicky rules to remember, you’re either going to need a rules Nazi in the group to keep them enforced or a kind heart that’s quick to forgive every time a player enters a bush without spending an extra movement point, or miscalculates the scoring when diving off the side of a cliff.