At last: You can now play Lemmings on your smartphone

Cult classic Lemmings is now available on your smartphone. — dpa

It's been 28 years since Lemmings became nearly every child gamer's favourite after-school pastime. The cult classic is now available on your smartphone – with in-app purchases.

The Lemmings are back. The classic 1990s puzzle game is now available for mobile devices (Android/iOS). The revival is fun except for some rather annoying game mechanics.

Now, as in the game's heyday, the goal is to prevent the blue creatures with the green hair from falling into abysses and to get as many of them as possible to the end of each level.

The Lemmings run straight ahead as always. If they hit a wall or fall down a hole, they die. Players have to keep them on track and have several tools to do this.

For example, Lemmings can dig through walls, build stairs or overcome great heights by using parachutes.

The problem is that one Lemming performs each of these tasks while the rest just keep running on. To control them all you always need to have more than one construction site open.

The game has been well implemented for smartphones. Levels are limited to one screen and the one-touch control is intuitive. However, overall Lemmings is less complex than its predecessors, something which might displease veteran fans.

One thing that's annoying is that while the game is free to play, every instruction to your Lemmings costs energy and if you run out of energy, you have to buy more using real money.

This is most irritating when the energy runs out in the middle of a level. Then you have to reach for your wallet or just stop playing for a while. – dpa