Fireboy and Watergirl
If you like to solve conundrums, brainteasers & labyrinths of various types on par with playing various escape games, then these lovely characters will definitely be to your liking. The games featuring Fireboy & Watergirl appeared on our free online game website a long time ago. Since there are several of them, we’ve decided to create a separate web page to feature these characters in their shiny uniqueness and tell our gamers more about them.The description of the gameplay
The puzzle platformer games featuring these two characters were developed by an individual game designer in the late 2000s. The first ever Fireboy and Watergirl game appeared in 2009. Since then, 5 more classical versions came out in the 2010s. They were redesigned in the late 2010s to be playable on HTML5 (because their original technology was Flash) to be supported on all modern gaming platforms.
The protagonists of the games are two heroes: a boy made completely of fire and a girl made of water by a hundred percent. His head resembles a burning bonfire. His body is much smaller compared to his head. On the head, there are eyes and a mouth — nothing else is featured. Her head has a hairstyle, which resembles water drops (usually, three but can be four, depending on the style of a particular game) and vividly denotes that she is a girl. The same as the boy, her face is formed only by eyes and mouth. Both those characters do not have noses or ears visible. The girl’s body is also smaller than her head.
The games featuring these characters are played by two players simultaneously (but controls can be theoretically managed by one person, although, one by one, because simultaneous gameplay would be really hard and sometimes impossible when coordinated and prompt actions of both heroes are required).
The nature of games featuring these characters is escaper. Initially, they are found to be locked in some premises (usually, a castle or temple). The temples differ by their type and name. Thus, players of our free online games featuring Fireboy and Watergirl can find such types of temples on our gaming server:
• light
• crystal (a.k.a. element)
• ice
• forest
• fairytales
• the cry.
There exist 6 official games of escaping genre. Fan-made ones are also possible to find online for free but they usually derive from the official ones and heavily exploit their topic. Although, it is the case that these two characters (or only one of them) may be present in other games as ‘invited’ or additional characters.
The principle of playing is to move characters around the levels, which is implemented in the two-dimensional playfield (there is no 3D graphics). They can move right, left, up & down (and also jump up and down). Since they are influenced by gravity and levels are made with several stories (a.k.a. planes), to move up and down, they, in addition to moving on their legs, have to occasionally use ladders, barrels, elevators & platforms. Some objects must be activated to be used, for instance, by using a crankshaft, pushing a button, or turning a switch. The complexity (and the excitement) of the gameplay derives from particular restrictions of the games: for instance, the characters are most often required to work together to pass a level — when one pushes and holds some button to make a door open for another character to enter it, the second remains in the place and then the one who passed through that door must find another door opener to open it again for the other & so forth. Such cooperation is super frequent during the gameplay. And that’s why it is hard to play by only one person. All games of this kind can be played from one and only keyboard — only the used keys are programmed to be different. For instance, someone plays with arrows and another player uses WASD keys (you can become acquainted with the controls before the game begins — maybe, additional keys are involved in a particular game).
Due to the physical nature of both characters, there will be many pitfalls and traps inside the levels, which are able to kill one of them or both. And vice versa — some features of levels allow only one character to pass further and he or she must find a way to help another, who is stuck behind. For instance, on a lava floor, the Fireboy can easily walk without receiving any damage but Watergirl cannot. So, obviously, he must walk first and find a way to extinguish this lava floor (or cover it with something) to make it feasible for her to pass through (if she cannot jump over or pass otherwise). So, all in all, these online free games are excellent examples of fruitful cooperation of players as a team to reach their objectives.
As we mentioned, this platformer was initially developed using the Flash technology but since it is dead for the modern Web space today, the games were redesigned into HTML5 (mainly throughout 2018-2022). Also, some older devices, where Flash is installed on their hard drives up to this time and wasn’t uninstalled yet, can also access the Flash-powered games (on other gaming websites, not ours, though, because we have everything on HTML5 only). Since many restrictions today apply to Flash technology, we would not recommend our gamers use it.
It is possible to play those games on our website at any time of the day and night — it’s only enough to open the section of games with Fireboy and Watergirl and pick anything to your liking. The games are available on personal computers, smartphones with any modern operating system, tablets & laptops. Although, the biggest degree of convenience of playing is reached on large-keyboard devices (which excludes mobile phones and some tablets) because of the need to use two sets of keys to play at the same time by people, without interfering with one another.
Those things are particularly attractive in these games:
• optimistic protagonists, always with smiles on their faces
• cute way of drawing, without many details
• mutually supporting game line, where progress through levels is not always possible if you play only with one character, leaving another motionless
• not too hard riddles, which are solvable at first or after a few attempts.
After both heroes are brought to a safe place (usually, their own doors), they go to a new level. If the game features non-linear (branched) development of levels, a player will have to choose, which branch to explore to get out of the temple. Along with the level progress, you might want to perform secondary goals: collect diamonds (of individual color for each of the characters) and other items if they are present in the levels.
Depending on the version of the game you’re in, you will find around 30 or 40 levels to pass. The Forest Temple, for instance, has 32 of them. What’s cool about the traps is that they are different for each kind of Temple but they all are recognizable and identifiable at first glance.
We think that the popularity of this game is based on simple controls: only four main keys for each character are enough to make just all actions, which you need to pass levels. And if you’re stuck in the middle of the process somewhere, just think of doing several jumps — this helps a lot at times :)
Similar two-player games
Fireboy and Watergirl are not the only 2-player games in the world, certainly. Without names (because there are too many of them), we’d like to highlight the kinds of 2-player games, which you might also find exciting to play on our free online website:
• rolling objects via a maze, where it is super easy to fall and spoil the level’s progress
• playing football (which is called soccer in the USA) or American football (which is also called differently in the US)
• basically, any sports or recreation game where more than one player is required can be made as an online free game for two or more gamers simultaneously: baseball, basketball, ping pong, billiards, chess, volleyball…
• fighting — like in a boxing ring or on a street
• shooters
• racers
• battles (including those, which have armored vehicles, like tanks, that oppose one another)
• tic-tac-toe
• snakes and ladders
• jumpers
• zombie killers
• medieval battles (that would include archery, swords & other knighthood stuff).
Film of 2023
Although not directly connected (at least, not officially), Fireboy and Watergirl have become the basis for Disney’s new animated film of 2023, which is called ‘Elemental’. It is in the latest stages of development (in which, according to the creative author, it was 7 years of his life) and the premiere is scheduled for the summer of 2023. The first person to notice obvious similarities between Elemental with our two gaming characters was a gaming journalist Nicole Clark writing for the American entertainment website Polygon in 2022. And she had all bases to say that: while original gaming heroes are a boy made of fire and a girl made of water, the film Elemental features them the same, only switching the fire and water in places: now, the girl is a fire creature and the boy is made of water. This, in fact, as we believe, is a tribute to the modern societal vibes: everyone around in the US in the 21st century wants more ‘fire’ to the lives of females in all senses, especially in social and job ways. In the film, a boy is depicted as a dude going with the flow, like, he does not want to control anything in his life; he is reckless and irresponsible. That’s a not very good depiction of the reality for many men in the world but there is nothing we can do about it — that’s the vision of the author.
This film is the mutual piece of the oeuvre of Pixar and Disney. The director of the film is Peter Sohn, who has a long history of work for Disney and Pixar. Thus, he worked as a director, writer, story artist, executive producer, story consultant, animator & voice actor for many years, being involved mostly in animated films. In each film, he played from 1 to 3 roles. The list of his works is large, including 26 pieces as of 2024 (including those that are scheduled but not released yet). Below, we’re naming some of them, which you might definitely know:
• Finding Nemo
• Wall-E
• Up
• Ratatouille
• Brave
• Monster University
• Finding Dory
• Cars 3
• Coco
• Soul
• Luca
• Turn Red
• Lightyear.
As you can see, this guy does wonderful creations and we only wanna believe that this one will also be good. By the way, in his career, he worked on various short films, video games, TV specials & other notable works, so, this film, once it’s aired, must be a good tribute — although unofficial — to the Fireboy and Watergirl cycles of games.
What is currently known about the film story is basically the same thing that is featured in the games with the characters we’re considering in this text: they both will be unavailable to touch or kiss one another and so, they must interact otherwise — through looking, talking & calling. Although, Peter Sohn did not support or deny that these characters were the basis for the film (maybe, he is shy). What he did tell, however, is that the work called ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ (anime animated TV series of 2005-2008 in the US made by Nickelodeon) was also not the basis for his film, even though the film exploits the same basis as Avatar: there are basic elements (water, fire, air & earth), which interact with one another through people and stuff.
And there is another obvious parallel to the existing similar piece: ‘The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl’, which was brought to the screens in 2005 (aimed at child audiences), which also feature two differently skilled protagonists. As you know from watching this film (if you have watched it), the girl controls lava, fire & lightning while the boy grasps water and ice.
So, do you believe Peter Sohn that these three bases for his film are not the bases, according to him? We wouldn’t. Anyway, the film ‘Elemental’ must be, probably, something in between Inside Out, Toy Story & Monster University — let’s watch this movie when it hits the screens to decide, what it is.