“Don’t die. No! No, green mud, jump jump jump…” Game over. This is about how games of Fire Boy and Water Girl go when I’m playing with my best friend. Technically, I’m not sure that it’s supposed to be a two-player game, but that’s how we always played it within our friend group. After all, there are two characters, and it’s easier to each take one than to play two characters doing completely different things at the same time. Then again, sometimes you really don’t want to have to share the controls, especially when it’s your seventh time running that map because someone keeps missing the jump (though realistically, who that someone is varies. It’s been you, too).
See, in this game, Fire Boy is controlled by the arrow keys, and Water Girl is controlled by WASD (try keeping those straight in your head as you try to avoid jumping to your death with two characters at once) and each can only traverse their own elements. If either of them steps in the other’s element, they die. This means that sometimes only one can go in a certain direction. There are also colored gems that only the matching character can retrieve, also suggesting that they should be the one to go in that direction. Green mud kills both, and is the bane of absolutely anyone trying to coordinate a jump on a swinging log so that they both make it across the pit.
You are scored (well, graded, it’s a letter grade) based on how long the round took you, and once you succeed the branching levels from it open up for attempts. I say branching because not all of them have only one track; some have three or more options from which to choose. You can always go back and play the other tracks as well.
Each version of Fire Boy and Water Girl has different systems special to it, like the Light Temple’s mirrors and portals and stuff, but I’ll leave those for you to discover on their own. I usually play it on Cool Math Games (1, 2, 3, 4). There is an official Fire Boy and Water Girl site as well, which is the one I’ll link to hereafter. This one has five versions, in order: The Forest Temple, The Light Temple, The Ice Temple, The Crystal Temple, The Element Temple.
