Fireboy and Watergirl Forest Temple: Speed Rooms, Puzzle Rooms and Target Times

Open the Forest Temple map and it looks like one long climb. Look closer and the rooms are not all the same. The game sorts its 32 levels into three kinds, and each kind wants something different from you and your partner.

The three kinds of room

• Normal rooms (17). The backbone of the temple: a mix of movement and switches, with a target time that gives you room to think.
• Puzzle rooms (9). These are about working out the order of moves — who holds which button, where the box goes, which lever to pull first. Their target times are the longest, because the game expects you to stop and think.
• Speed rooms (6). Short, tight rooms where the route is fairly clear but the clock is not forgiving. The quickest target time in the temple is under twenty seconds.

Target times

Every room has a time to beat. They range from well under half a minute in the fastest speed rooms to more than a minute and a half in the biggest puzzle rooms. Finishing within the time, along with collecting the gems, is what gives you the best result for that room. You can always finish a room slowly — the target time is a goal, not a limit.

How to handle puzzle rooms

1. Do not move straight away. Look at the whole room first. Find the doors, the buttons, the levers and every pool.
2. Work backwards. Start from the doors: what has to be open, lowered or held for each hero to reach theirs?
3. Decide who goes first. Usually one hero opens the way for the other, then gets let through in return.
4. Test the box. If a room has a box, it is almost always the answer to a button nobody can stand on.

How to handle speed rooms

1. Play it once without caring about time. Learn the route and where each gem is.
2. Move both heroes together. In speed rooms, waiting costs more than a small risk. If you are playing alone, practise moving both at once on the simple parts.
3. Skip nothing, backtrack nothing. Take the gems on the way. Going back for one usually costs more time than it is worth.

The branching map

The Forest Temple is not a straight line. The map branches, so you can often choose which room to play next. If a puzzle room has you stuck, try a different branch and come back later — a fresh look often makes the answer obvious.

Playing for the best result

Once you have finished the temple, go back through the rooms you cleared slowly. With the solution already known, most of them become speed challenges of their own, and beating every target time is a good long-term goal for two players who know each other's timing.