The Life of a Lab Tester

Hi Gs,

Poptropica Houses?  Naw, that’ll neve–

I was using a suggestible wifi hotspot on the parking lot of Pizza Hut today. I had to make my post about Mocktropica for everyone. I went ahead, and just for fun, logged into my Poptropica account. What did I see on the homepage? Something new:

Poptropica Labs is a new feature for members that allows them to test new and unreleased to the public features. Believe me, I am super excited to see how this turns out. I’m sure most of Ohio and some of Kentucky heard my girly scream when I saw the promo screen.

The newest test is called “Lands”, and is a sort of island maker with cool new features.

So, let’s see what this island maker can do!

The Lands

Guess what? These labs are in the old format! I’m starting to conclude that Poptropica will never be fully converted into SUI. The main hub of the game will stay the same. Anyway, this was a pretty wild experience! As a beta tester, I couldn’t save my “lands” that I created, but I still had some fun with it.

In a nutshell, this new feature makes Poptropica sorta like Minecraft. It is endless.

The idea is that you can create your own land from scratch. This land can be rainy, volcanoey (is that a word? Google doesn’t think so. 😛 ), crystally, or paradise. You can jump from pregenerated island to pregenerated island, each one different in it’s own way (Note: the blimp goes way too slow on the map…). Generate your own here: http://static.poptropica.com/popups/Demo/landPrototypeMap.swf  

When you find an island that suits you, you can start customizing and developing it. Actually, I think that the term “island” should not be used… instead, just use land. Because running around and jumping on platforms is not an island.

The Pets

Sadly, instead of narfs, Poptropica gives us pet rocks. They have eyes that follow your cursor, sometimes are evil, and did I mention narfs? We need narfs. All these pets do is jump around, run away from you, and act depressed. You hatch these little angels for 10 pop coins each, and they are not worth it. xD

When an angry rock happens to hatch, just blow it up before it chomps on you. Those guys are really annoying. 😛

The Pop Coins

You probably have been questioning my mentioned “pop coins”. Guess what! Mocktropica is turning into a reality! In labs, everything costs money. When you’re all out, blow up stuff and mine for more! Actually, this feature turns out to be a lot of fun! Although it is a little hard to mine with bombs, I still enjoy this feature. Until you run out of land to blow up and the only place left with money is under the thing you are building… >.<

When you see a sparkling in the soil under you, you blow up the land until you reach it to earn money. Sometimes you’ll only get 15 pop coins, sometimes you’ll get hundreds in big bags. And sometimes, just sometimes, a bag of money will fall out of the sky, and you will have to chase it to the end of the screen to get it. I’m not even joking.

The (Fail) Houses

When you finally get around to making a house after trying out all the new features of rocks that move and blowing stuff up, you are going to fail. Miserably.

Turns out, when your environment is rainy, your house will not block out the rain. I guess I didn’t get the memo while creating my house, because I actually made one that you could go into…

So… yeah. You can also do some pretty awesome stuff with the backing of your house:

I put air vents to blow me up the second floor, and mattresses covered the floor when you get there. Don’t ask why that rope is there… Anyway, you can make windows and wood/stone/bamboo backgrounds, etc. I also didn’t get another memo, which was that you can rotate your items with the left and right arrow key. 😛

The Tools

As you can see in the picture above, the tools that you can build with are limited. You can have a rope, a mattress, an air vent, a door, adjust the water level, an egg that hatches a rock, a stupid basketball that gets stuck in places, a bomb, a ground pile, a stone pillar, a crate, a bunch of building supplies, and that’s pretty much it. Not much to play with it you ask me.

The Survey

After you finish your fun, you can take a survey and tell them what you think. I’m not going to give the link to everyone because that would definitely mess them up, but I can and will tell you that according to the survey, they have big ideas for this thing:

Those are all great ideas! What do you think about those possibilities?

~

I think “Lands” needs a little more work. The pets need toys, the tools need additions, the rain setting needs to be able to be turned off, and the angry pets need to appear more. 😛 Those guys are fun. And sorry if I was a little critical in my review… I was expecting something a little different. 😉

If you want to give the Poptropica Creators some advice about this new feature, you can tell them in the comments and I will put it in the post! 😀

Viewer’s Thoughts

SamWow5 – I wish u can do all 4 sides of the house instead of one….

Smart Leopard – U should be able to completely make a house. Just dreaming here, but what if u could design the outside of a house and Enter it and design the inside with furniture… I guess that’s a bit much 😛

Silver Wolf – I, personally, despise it. It teases me with it’s mocking one-layer. I love building and a variety of other things, but there’s nothing to build if there’s only ONE layer. I want the mattress to go behind the wall sometimes, so it would look as if a door was really opening into a house. I mean, they’re only letting us make it in Poptropica’s style. It would be nice to have another style; we’re all original, and we all have different styles, which can be much different than Poptropica’s. I just…love it and hate it. I love the idea, but hate how little detail they put in it. You can make plenty of things with the few materials they provide; YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE IT WITH ONE LAYER. >.<

Comical Turtle – So cool! I think it’s a really good idea even though it’s not perfect yet…….

renaldiinfernus – Pop coins? Pop Coins? Pop Coins. REALLY?!?! That may be one of the most aweful parts of Mocktropica. DONT LISTEN TO FOCUS TESTER HES A JERK!

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-HP