Fireboy and Watergirl: The Co-op Puzzle Platformer That Outlived Flash
Fireboy and Watergirl in The Forest Temple is one of the few browser games from the Flash era that people still actively search for by name more than fifteen years after release. The idea is almost embarrassingly simple — two characters, two elements, one exit — and it has survived because the puzzles are built around a constraint no other platformer has: your partner is the level. This guide covers who made it, exactly what the build on this page contains, and how to stop dying in the first ten levels.
Who Made Fireboy and Watergirl
The original was created by Oslo Albet and released as a Flash game on 19 November 2009. Armor Games, one of the portals that hosted it at launch, still lists that date on its game page, and the Internet Archive's preserved copy carries the same date with Albet credited as the author.
The version embedded on this page is not the Flash file. It is the HTML5 rebuild, published to GameDistribution on 24 May 2018 under the title Fireboy and Watergirl 1 Forest Temple, with Agame listed as the company behind it. Open the credits screen inside the game and it says, in the game's own words, "All credit goes to" — Oslo Albet, Anna Tamarit, Jan Villanueva — signed Septimania 2018. The rebuild runs on the Phaser HTML5 engine at a 900×510 canvas, which is why it loads in a tab with no plugin, no download and no Flash emulator involved.
What Is Actually In The Forest Temple
Most sites will tell you the game "has lots of levels." The game's own level data is more specific than that. The Forest Temple contains 32 levels, and they are not laid out in a straight line — the map is a branching tree. The first level is a tutorial, and after the fourth node the map forks into five separate branches, with three more forks deeper in. You choose which branch to push down, which means two players can finish the temple having played the levels in a different order.
Each level also carries a target time, and desktop and mobile targets are set separately — mobile gets more generous limits, because on-screen buttons are slower than a keyboard. The tightest level on desktop gives you 18 seconds; the longest allows 105.
The levels are internally tagged by what they are testing:
| Level type | How many | What it demands |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | 6 levels | A short, tight route run cleanly against the clock |
| Puzzle | 9 levels | Working out the order of operations before you move |
| Standard | The remaining 17 | A mix of both, at moderate pressure |
The diamonds are tracked in three separate pools: red, blue and silver. Red belongs to Fireboy, blue to Watergirl, and silver counts for either. The temple keeps a running total of how many you have collected against how many exist, so a "finished" temple and a fully collected temple are two different achievements.
Controls
The two characters are on completely separate key sets, which is the whole reason the game works with one player or two:
- Fireboy — the arrow keys: Up to jump, Left and Right to move.
- Watergirl — W to jump, A and D to move.
There is no crouch or down key for either character. On phones and tablets, the left on-screen buttons drive Fireboy and the right ones drive Watergirl; an alternative scheme lets you tap a character to take control of them and steer with a single arrow. You can switch between mobile control schemes in the options menu.
The Rules That Actually Kill You
The game states its own rules in the tutorial levels, and every one of them is a death sentence if you forget it:
Never mix fire and water. Fireboy dies instantly in a water pool, Watergirl dies instantly in a fire pool. This never becomes safe.
Green goo hurts them both. The green pools are the only hazard with no owner. There is no "my character can cross this one" — nobody crosses green.
Levers remain as you leave them. A lever is state. Flip it, walk away, and the world stays flipped. Levers are how one character changes the level for the other.
Buttons, however, must be held. A button only works while something is standing on it — a character or a pushed box. This is the single most important distinction in the game, and it is the source of nearly every "we're stuck" moment.
They can push boxes around. Boxes are the answer to the button problem: park a box on a button and you have converted a held button into a lever.
Open the finish doors by standing in front of them. Both characters must reach their own door — Fireboy's and Watergirl's — before the level ends. One of you standing there alone does nothing.
Why the button/lever split is the whole game
Once you internalise that levers persist and buttons don't, most Forest Temple puzzles collapse into one question: does this mechanism need to stay on after I leave? If yes, you need a lever, a box, or your partner physically standing there. If no, walk over it and keep going. Players who stay stuck are almost always trying to solve a box puzzle with a body, or a body puzzle with a box.
How to Actually Get Through It
Move one character at a time at first. Trying to drive both simultaneously is the classic beginner mistake in single-player. Park one somewhere safe, advance the other, then swap. You lose time and gain a completed level — a trade worth making until the route is memorised.
Scout before you sprint. On the nine puzzle-tagged levels the timer is generous on purpose. Spend the first few seconds reading where the boxes, levers and buttons are relative to each other rather than moving.
Split the diamond runs. Red diamonds are often placed on Fireboy-only ground and blue on Watergirl-only ground, so trying to sweep them in one pass usually means one character waiting in a dangerous spot. Take them on the way through, not as a detour.
Treat speed levels as memorisation, not reflex. Six levels are explicitly built as time trials. Run them once slowly to learn the route, then run them properly. Attempting them cold against an 18-second clock is how people conclude the game is unfair.
Use the branching map. If one branch is frustrating you, back out and take another. The temple does not require you to clear branches in order.
More Games on This Site
If two-character coordination is your thing, the risk games here run on a different but related nerve — reading a situation before you commit:
- Buckshot Roulette — a shell-counting duel where every trigger pull is a calculable decision rather than a guess.
- Orange Roulette — the cartoon-oranges classic, including a two-player hotseat mode on one keyboard.
- Russian Roulette — the format stripped to nothing, useful for feeling how much a single piece of information is worth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Fireboy and Watergirl free to play here?
Yes. The HTML5 build on this page is free, with no download, no install and no account required.
Does Fireboy and Watergirl work unblocked at school?
It runs entirely in the browser with nothing to install, so it works wherever the page loads and the network allows the embedded content. If the game area stays blank, the network filter is blocking the embed rather than the game itself.
Can I play Fireboy and Watergirl on mobile?
Yes. The distributor lists this build as supported on iOS and Android in landscape orientation, with on-screen controls — the left buttons for Fireboy, the right for Watergirl. You can change the mobile control scheme in the options menu.
How many levels does Forest Temple have?
32, according to the game's own level data. The first is a tutorial, and the map branches rather than running in a single line.
Can one person play both characters?
Yes. Fireboy uses the arrow keys and Watergirl uses W/A/D, so a single player can drive both — most people alternate rather than controlling them at the same time. Two players on one keyboard is the intended way, though.
Is this the original Flash game?
No, and no Flash emulator is involved. This is the HTML5 rebuild published in 2018, credited in-game to Oslo Albet, Anna Tamarit and Jan Villanueva. The original 2009 Flash release is preserved separately by archival projects.