Hello, ghouls and ghosts! Halloween is fast approaching, and everyone is gearing up for some spoopy fun. The hype is so infectious that the Poptropica Creators couldn’t avoid it. Yesterday, they announced a new limited time event coming to Poptropica maps near you.
Everyone, brace yourselves because the zomberries will be returning for an upcoming Zomberry Special Event!!!
The original Creators’ Blog post also featured two Zomberry-themed sketches— possibly concept art for the event’s map icon— to go along with the announcement. You can see them below.
If you go to Instagram, you can see what’s presumably the final icon design, which borrows elements from both sketches. The caption on the Instagram teaser simply reads, “Something is happening VERY SOON. And then more is happening after that.”
Man, there’s a lot to look forward to! Judging from the announcement, it’s likely not the Zomberry Island remaster that was teased last year. Since it will a limited time event, it may be a special minigame similar to D.C. Diner or a quest like the Haunted House.
This event could be borrowing elements from previously scrapped Zomberry minigames, which we covered in our “PHB Sneak Peeks” series. Maybe it has something to do with that 8-bit minigame that was teased for the Zomberry Island remaster? Who knows? We’ll have to wait and see.
Players participating in this limited time event will be awarded special perks, so who knows what new prizes could be in store. Keep an eye out for upcoming sneak peeks, and be prepared for the return of the fruity undead.
While we’re waiting for this event, why not buy some costumes to dress up your Poptropican? The Poptropica store added some new items for players to buy, so it’s a great chance to get in the Halloween spirit. Plus, it gives you more to work with for the PHB’s Halloween costume contest. 😉
Welcome to another Ramble Review! This guest post comes from Purple Paw, who will be rambling about Red Dragon Island.
Let’s talk about Red Dragon Island. I choose it mainly because it is one of the few very good sponsored islands. At first, I was skeptical about choosing a sponsored island, because usually, sponsored islands are very poor at showing Poptropica’s authenticity. Mostly, they tend to be unexciting remakes, nothing you would think of as being truly Poptropica. But Red Dragon? This island couldn’t be more different.
As you may know, the story is based off of the Magic Treehouse book Dragon of the Red Dawn, with some of the gameplay tactics borrowed from Night of the Ninjas, an earlier Magic Treehouse book that also takes place in ancient Japan. But the plot of the Red Dragon Island takes such a unique twist from this classic book series, it doesn’t feel like a sponsored island at all; miraculously, it feels like a true Poptropica island.
And it wasn’t just the storytelling aspect of this island that made me choose Red Dragon; the gameplay, too, adds greatly to the overall enjoyment of the island. Though not exceedingly difficult, learning ninja skills does take some concentration and practice, and you’ve got to focus and think hard to master catching the kappa, trimming the bonsai, and other tasks you’re asked to complete, creating the perfect balance between challenge and fun.
Last but not least, the scenery adds the icing to the cake, and ties this whole amazing adventure together. Floating cherry blossoms, lily-pad dotted ponds, and splendid architecture make for one of the most beautiful and poetic islands yet.
There’s simply nothing you can’t enjoy about this island, and I think Red Dragon surely deserves a spot in the best of all time.
Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Purple Paw. If you did, be sure to check out previous Ramble Reviews on islands like Twisted Thicket and Ghost Story, and stay tuned for more!Plus, join in on the fun on the PHC Discord.
The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our page on how to Write for the PHB, and share blog posts on the PHC.
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Greetings, Poptropicans! Today, we’ll be looking at the latest store update and listening to some new island soundtracks. Let’s get started!
Another store rotation brings a unique gallery of items, including six new Halloween-themed outfits: Chillin’ Chills, Bit Dark, October Shade, Lemon Shark, Bubblegum Unicorn, and Fuzzy Monster. The store currently boasts 47 items, 21 of which are members-only.
Update: this store lineup received seven more items after the writing of this post, bringing the total to from 40 items to 47 items. They are the Dance-a-corn Costume, Fairytale Costume, Headless Costume, Inflatable Rex Costume, Cozy Cocoa, Witch’s Brew, and Autumn Scarves.
The items available for purchase are the following:
Costumes: Stylin’ Outfit*, Cool Outfit*, Chillin’ Chills, Bit Dark, October Shade, Lemon Shark, Bubblegum Unicorn*, Fuzzy Monster, Dance-a-corn Costume, Fairytale Costume, Headless Costume, Inflatable Rex Costume, Cozy Cocoa, Bride of Frankenstein*, and Frankenstein*
Followers: Elephant, Noodle Guy*, Dolphin*, Deer, Charlie the Chocomonkey*, and Atlantis Drone
Powers: Binary Rain*, Fireworks*, Cinnamon Fire Flavor Pop Gum, Meteor Shower*, Bobblehead*, Torch, and Electrify
Pranks: Sticky Notes, Witch’s Brew, Sneezing Powder, 8-Bit Birthday Pixel Pig Power, Inside Out Power*, and Love Potion* (this item is absent in the Flash version)
Miscellaneous: Party Popper*, Flamingo Floatie*, Watermelon Purse*, Drone Flying Follower*, Popsicles*, Hover Scooter*, School Backpack, Notebooks, Marshmallow Roaster, Hiking Boots, Silly Streams, Balloons*, and Autumn Scarves
Items marked with a * are members only.
In other news, Poptropica composer Jeff Heim uploaded three new Pop soundtracks to Soundcloud! (Thanks to MaryannTheConqueror for the news) The titles of these songs hint at two classic island remasters in the works: Lunar Colony Island and Ghost Story Island.
Our first song is “Lunar Colony”, an obvious nod to Lunar Colony Island. The wondrous orchestra fits the theme of exploring an unknown territory, such as the moon.
Next, we have two songs for Ghost Story Island. The first of these two is “Ghost Story Main Theme”. This eerie tune is the perfect piece for walking down the foggy streets of Hemlock Harbor and learning about the town’s tragic past.
The second Ghost Story Island song— and the final of the three new songs—is called “Fiona’s Theme”. The first half sets up a spooky atmosphere, and the second half plays the melody of Fiona’s Song (the song you play on the violin in Ghost Story Island). A wonderful track full of ambience and nostalgia!
It’s a pleasant surprise that these songs were released so suddenly. Perhaps work on remastering the classic islands began earlier than we expected. It gives us some assurance that these fan-favorite islands are not forgotten and will stick around after the end of Adobe Flash.
Now in our 12th year of this tradition, we’re once again thrilled to announce our annual Poptropica Halloween costume contest. This year’s theme: Heroes & Villains. Which side will you choose?
Whether you’re inventing your own characters or emulating icons from pop culture, we invite you to get your creativity flowing by assembling a Poptropica costume (or two, or several) based on either (or both!) of these themes. And one more specialty for this year…
👯♀️ Group costumes are encouraged! Get some friends together (or make some new ones on the PHC or in the comments section of this post) and plan your costumes as a group. All it takes is two or more.
As an example, the PHB team decided to band together this year to form the Colors of the Rainbow! 🌈 In keeping with the theme, we’ve split into the Warm Warriors (heroes) and Cool Criminals (villains)—but that’s optional for group costumes. They just have to be related.
“Vermilion Virago” by Spotted Dragon
“Volcanic Vindicator” by Slanted Fish
“Golden Guerrilla” by Lucky Joker
“Busch ‘Borrower'” by Sporty Boa
“Navy Ninja” by Fierce Flyer
“Violet Vamp” by Gentle Dolphin
📝 Here’s what you need to know about entering:
🦸♂️ Assemble your costume for either (or both) categories on Poptropica, including for group costumes. You may enter each category (heroes, villains, group) as many times as you like. You may concurrently submit an entry for both the hero/villain categories and a group costume (which may be considered its own category of sorts). However, each individual person is eligible to win just once per category.
📸 Take a screenshot of your costume entry in the Costumizer window.* Here’s how to take a screenshot — the instructions will vary depending on your device. For Windows, you’ll also need to paste it somewhere to save it as an image file on your computer. Also, use the in-game Costumizer window (pictured below) as that will display your character at a high resolution. Ideally, crop the image to show just your character.
🔗 Upload the image to the web and share the link in the comments of this post. You can use a site like imgur or Discord to upload your picture and obtain a web link for it that can then be shared so others can see it. Once you’ve got a link, comment on this PHB post you’re reading right now with the link. Include details such as what category you’re entering, what you’re naming your costume, and anything else you’d like to share about it.
*Note: Though we’ve used Avatar Studio (AS) links in the past, many of the newer items in Poptropica are not visible through AS. If your entire costume is still viewable by AS, you’re welcome to provide a username (not link, as those don’t work with AS anymore) in lieu of a picture. However, since AS is no longer a complete guarantee for displaying costumes, we recommend taking a screenshot.
Share a screenshot of your costume in the Costumizer window, like so. You can access this screen from the green shirt button in the menu if you’re in Flash, or from costumizing one of your clothing items in Haxe.
📝 Things to Note ✨
💻 If you send us a username for us to look up on the Avatar Studio, you’ll have to keep your costume intact until Halloween so we can see it throughout the month. That’s something you won’t have to concern yourself with if you send a screenshot instead, and it’ll be easier for you to capture multiple costume entries!
👯♀️ Group costume rules: Group costumes are encouraged to match the heroes & villains theme, but this is not required. An individual entry within a group costume entry may also qualify for the singular-costume hero/villain categories, but we will take care to honor group efforts by prioritizing awards for this category before others, as each individual person may only win once per category.
💡 Tips for seeking out costume parts: We know Poptropica has changed a lot in the past couple years, making lots of old methods obsolete, but there are still places you can go for cool costume parts. The Flash version of Pop has more options, but Haxe has plenty of store costumes too. Dig through old store items, buy new store costumes, crank the switch in the New You shop on Home Island, snag something off an NPC from PoptropiCon, sneak your way into old islands with idk’s directory, and use MAP (for individual parts) or the ASG Machine (for full costumes) along with usernames from our ASG collection.
👑 Prizes ✨
🗓 The contest closes on Friday, October 30. We’ll announce the winners the next day.
🎃 On Halloween (October 31), we’ll post our favorite costumes from each category on the front page of the PHB for all to enjoy.
🌟 A grand prize winner will be selected for each category, plus one group. Each grand prize winner will receive a 1-month Poptropica membership. Up to 6 memberships for the winning group will be awarded, with one month per participant.
🕺 Winning costumes will be immortalized on our Costumes page, but we’ll also have honorable mentions for just the post, not page.
🦹♀️🦸♂️👻 There are no heroes without villains… …and no villains without heroes 🦹♂️🦸♀️🎃
Hey Poptropicans! We’ve got a couple of Mocktropica-adjacent updates to share this weekend. Let’s start with the fun one…
With the end of September comes the conclusion of Poptropica’s #DrBeevmini art contest to draw the beloved furry doctor of Mocktropica Island in one’s own style. Check out the beev-tiful creations they featured on their Instagram story on Thursday:
Although they mentioned a prize of 10,000 credits in their original post about the drawing challenge, we haven’t heard any word yet about anyone receiving the prize. We’ll let you know if we get an update!
Dr. Beev isn’t the only thing Poptropicans are drawing! Have you seen the Poptober drawing challenge yet? It’ll give you plenty of ideas for Poptropica inspired creations throughout the month of October!
Check out this artwork from the PHB’s own Lucky Joker for the first Poptober prompt, “Island.” In this case, he went with Ghost Story Island and the love triangle of the tale. Learn more about Poptober here!
“Triade D’amour (Poptober Day 1: Island)” by Lucky Joker
And for more Poptropica fan art, check out Community Creations! This month’s theme is “Monsters.” 🐲
In other not-so-fun news, an unwelcome surprise may now greet you as you travel from scene to scene in Poptropica: full game screen video ads.
With sidebar ads, footer ads including a video ad already, and now the full game screen video ad, the Poptropica browser is literally all ads.
The ads so far have been for kids’ products like Nerf guns, Minecraft Dungeons, and LEGO Mario. (Thanks to Dangerous Icicle and Gentle Dolphin for their reporting.)
The ads are about 15 seconds long and are not skippable. So far, these ads only appear in the Haxe version of the game. They don’t show up every time, but they do appear every now and then, and a regular loading screen will come up after the ad itself ends.
And yes, they’re rather annoying.
This isn’t the first time Poptropica has tried to do this, either. Back in 2014, video ads also appeared in between scenes to advertise for Galactic Hot Dogs, a book series owned by Poptropica’s parent company StoryArc Media which also has its own Poptropica island. After receiving much backlash from players, the video ads disappeared within a month.
A scene from Mocktropica Island where the player is charged for simply trying to leave a scene in the game.
With this stunt, Poptropica seems more desperate than ever to make money from and for the game. We don’t know what their financial situation looks like, but can only make guesses from moves like this one that it seems, more than ever, that things aren’t going well.
Video ads you’re forced to view are an easy way for Poptropica to make a buck, and definitely much quicker than creating a whole island for advertising, but it comes at a great cost in a different way: the players’ user experience. Who wants to play a game where the screen is all ads? And ultimately, there is no Poptropica without the players.
So for Poptropica to be willing to sacrifice that, despite their long track record of creating actual non-intrusive engaging ads in the past, is a big sign that either they care more about lining their pockets than their players’ experiences, or they’ve hit a low enough point they’ll do whatever it takes to make enough to keep Poptropica afloat.
We may love Dr. Beev but we certainly don’t love the other elements Poptropica is borrowing from Mocktropica Island! Do you agree? What do you think? Share with us in the comments and on the PHC!
“Poptober Day 2: Carnival” by Magniventris
On a lighter note, we hope you’ll join us for Poptober and Community Creations this month! And there’s at least one more big event to look out for this spooky season: the PHB’s Halloween costume contest! Details dropping very soon, so stay tuned… 🎃
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