Our Discovery Island

Oh boy… ORANGE POPTROPICA?!

HPuterpop

Hi Gs,

I made a discovery yesterday – something that may change everything. Actually, so much stuff has been going on lately that I’m sorta worried – school is starting soon!

I was searching through Amazon for ‘poptropica books’, as I do every once and a while. I’m super hopeful for the Mystery of the Map graphic novel! But instead, I found more of the ‘Poptropica English’ books – if you’re not aware of the first, it was called ‘Future Island‘ – I discovered it back in 2014.

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Digging further, I zoomed in on one of the backs of the books, and went to the site it directed to – pearsonelt.com/ourdiscoveryisland. This redirects to an intro to ‘Our Discovery Island: Powered by Poptropica’. Once in the site, I was shocked – this was what Pearson was up to? Apparently, ‘Poptropica English’ was a part of an educational class made by Pearson!

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But there’s more. Going to ourdiscoveryisland.com, I was shocked – orange Poptropica! Trying to create a new player, it seemed you need an access code to get in.

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So, I went to Chris Barney, a dev of Poptropica who I am in contact with. He told me that Poptropica contributed (not sold) its engine to Pearson, and that more of these “Poptropica clones” may be showing up soon.

The wording on the site made it seem like that they had created actual islands based on the books. Watching a few videos (FROM 2011?!), it showed these islands (they look like real islands, too!). Here’s the thing, though: these characters had actual audio voice acting!

In addition to that gameplay video, there are also animations for Our Discovery Island on YouTube – likely related to the “Poptropica animations” we’ve heard about before.

I wasn’t completely convinced, until my friend Pixel got into an account! They do have voice acting – and it isn’t half bad! And let me remind you that this is pre-SUI (still unsure about my cash-cow theory?).

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There are a number of these islands, based on the books (so yes, one for Future Island too), each following the simplistic plot of the books.

Again, Chris said that there are more of these to come! I wonder what troubles this could cause…

Our Discovery Island is not easily accessible, and I’m probably going to have to buy the books to get in. However, it has the Poptropica name plastered all over it, and so it technically is official content. The Poptropica Wiki has got some work to do.

Also, it’s run by Pearson – could this be why Poptropica left?

TAFN.

-HPuterpop

Published by HPuterpop

I'm Andrew Wiles, although on this account I'm known as HPuterpop. I've played Poptropica since 2007, the year it started. I play on the users puterpop and puterpoptropica. I'm a graphic designer, editor on the Poptropica Help Blog, and executive manager on the Poptropica Wiki. Check out my links to find out what I'm doing at the moment - I like to stay active in the community and always have a couple projects in the works. Consider subscribing to my YouTube channel and following me on Google+. I would greatly appreciate it. I'd like to stress how easy it is to contact me, so if you do need to, [email protected] is the one to contact. Thanks for reading, I'll see you soon. :) And thanks to Muzzki for my current profile pic!

71 thoughts on “Oh boy… ORANGE POPTROPICA?!”

      2. The voices are meant for children learning English, so it may sound somewhat slow and childish. I doubt they’re intentionally copying another franchise though.

  4. I would go bling ohmy .-. And the wiki already has work to be done so this means more work! (Also I just realised that there are 1086 pages and 500+ article stubs?!?!) Also, why have we never heard of this before? o.O

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  5. And will we have a red Poptropica, yellow Poptropica, green Poptropica, indigo Poptropica, violet Poptropica and rainbow Poptropica soon? .-.

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  7. Orange Poptropica? Don’t you find that a bit too bright? I thought blue was ten times better Well, I went on the website and it even had the name ‘Kitten’!! I watched the video and it is horrible! Poptropica silent/ music is better and to me, the fellow Poptropicans look like they’re 9 but they’re only 6. (Oh and the voices sound like Peppa Pig ;p) And instead of collecting clues from other characters, we get to know their name and age. Odd on so many levels. :/

    Plus they have these really kiddish voices which makes it sound a bit babyish. Thank God that regular Poptropica not as annoying, otherwise I would’ve gone crazy! >_<

    (No offence to those who like this idea/think this idea is pretty neat)

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      1. Games include: “Match Card”, “Photo Shoot”, “Quiz”, “Hungry Shark”, “Litter Bugs”, and “Spell Drop”.

      2. I want to say that I’m sorry to whoever person’s password I changed. But then again, you probably shouldn’t have your password as “password” anyways.

  11. Orange Poptropica? THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! But I wish regular Poptropica had voices that sound AMERICAN! But that would depend on the island though…

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    1. For me I’d want to hear different accents based on the character or country, like the ferris wheel guy on Monster Carnival Island and most characters on Wild West xD

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  15. I recently tried downloading poptropica app, but it says ”Can’t download the app due to error 190” 😦

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  18. I got into an account and messed around… you can do randomizing and stuff on it lol
    but seriously, WHY?! the voices are just….
    I’ll just say Poptropica was never meant to have voices….

    Reply
  19. Pingback: Our Orange Poptropica-ish Discovery Island | Adventure Time Pop

  20. Orange…Poptropica??? Weird.
    I wonder what the state of this project is going to be, considering that Poptropica is no longer owned by Pearson, and that they no longer develop islands in the pre-SUI engine. Will Sandbox continue to allow Pearson to use the older engine for Our Discovery Island? And is this related to why Poptropica cut ties with them?

    On a different note…why do all the voice actors sound like British children? They’re so….eugh. Makes me almost glad Poptropica doesn’t have voice acting.

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  21. I got in an account and played Space island. I restarted the island so the original account holder can complete the island.

    It’s basically Poptropica with voices and instead of trying to figure out what to do, you already know at the beginning and all you have to do is to complete the task.

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  24. i think pearson is going pretty far with this. getting fired off of poptropica, then going back to their project in 2011? it looks like pearson was ready for this. of course, they were milking the money cow before they went back, and i cant believe the poptropica creators allowed this.

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    2. There seems to be some misunderstanding about Pearson’s role here. Pearson is a company, which would be more than a “he”. They’ve owned Poptropica up until recently, when Poptropica was bought by Sandbox (“fired” is probably not the right term). Poptropica Creators contributed the Poptropica engine to Pearson to use in separate projects such as Our Discovery Island, so they weren’t “going back to their project” per se. Poptropica as we know it and Our Discovery Island are meant for different audiences, and while both are technically businesses, money does not seem to be their sole focus. Hope this helps.

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    3. here are the item links ive found: 1001-1006 2001-2006 301-325
      Just change the link here: http://ourdiscoveryisland.com/items/item325.swf

      detector? http://ourdiscoveryisland.com/popups/detector.swf
      scene new arrivals: http://ourdiscoveryisland.com/scenes/islandSpace/sceneNewArrivals.swf
      a common room, which actually had another player in it! http://ourdiscoveryisland.com/scenes/islandSpace/sceneChat.swf
      the chat questions are different, mostly yes/no questions
      part of picture dictionary: http://ourdiscoveryisland.com/media/american/level3/dictionary/images/l3_actions/l3_actions.swf

      there are so many new things introduced with orange poptropica, it would take a while, and a really large post to list them all.

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  27. I found this before and i thought it was one of those websites where it asked for ur user/pass and gives u membership but it actually hacks u but i was wrong…

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  28. i thought its one of the fake/bootleg poptropica….
    but its actually a orange,educational,harder to sign in version of poptropica

    and also a british version of poptropica…

    Reply

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