Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans — you may recall that just last week, the Poptropica Creators’ Blog put out an open call for guest writers. Today, we’re seeing our very first guest post on the official blog from one Fearless Walker!

Interestingly, Fearless Walker’s writing doesn’t show up on the blog’s homepage, but only appears when you click into the post. From there, she shares that she’s gained her expertise from having played for 8 years now, as well as 5 random facts and tips for Poptropica, punctuated with exclamation marks aplenty. Read Fearless Walker’s full post »

Though it’s our first time meeting Fearless Walker (hello if you’re reading this!), you may be more familiar with some of the other guest writers who will be making an appearance on the Pop blog.

Over the past day, a few of us from the PHC received an email from the Poptropica Creators inviting us to be Poptropica guest bloggers: Invisible Ring, whom you might recognize for her recent fan videos and compilation of the Poptropica comics; Purple Paw, a PHB staff writer, and yours truly, Slanted Fish, also a PHB staffer. What an opportunity!

The email sent by the Pop Creators inviting me to guest blog. The signer may be Natalie Shahmiri, Poptropica’s general manager, who was part of our Q&A with the Pop CEO.

I’m personally grateful for the chance to share on the Creators’ Blog and am already thinking about what I might write about! In particular, I’d love to take the chance to ask and share about Poptropica behind the scenes, as well as highlight creative work from the fandom (a little intro to the PHB, perhaps? 😉 ). We’ll see how it goes!

As the PHB noted earlier, the Creators are only offering guest writing opportunities to those who are 13 or older. They didn’t say why, but our speculation is possible concerns about child labor laws, though we don’t know the specifics. Still, the policy has spawned some discontent among younger kids in the Poptropica community, expressed in the official blog’s comments. Might there be an explanation?

If you feel similarly, or didn’t get an invitation for the Creators’ Blog, let me offer you the next best thing: you can guest write for the PHB! We might not be as big as the Creators’ Blog (though we don’t know their stats), but we’ve shared plenty of great guest posts here, and have no age requirements. All the details are on our Write for the PHB page!

While we’re on the subject of blogging about Poptropica, the PHB recently published a new page all about Our Philosophy. 📖 You can find it under the “About” tab on the site menu. The article is a reflection on why the PHB exists and endures, including why we think it’s worth investing in this corner of children’s media and how that shapes those whose lives it touches. Enjoy the read »

See you next time—and perhaps on the Poptropica Creators’ Blog! ✌️

~slantedfish 🐠

Pets, Store

Winter boys, girls, pets? Bully (bot) for you!

January 21, 2021 Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans — new updates are in store! 🛍

Costumes have rotated, though other items remain the same as before. Several winter boy/girl costumes are in season, though you won’t find the full series together. Anyway, here they are, with new poses and all:

The Creators’ Blog also highlighted the Bully Bot Costume for its complementing of the Legendary Swords: Match 3 minigame, though veteran players may recognize that the Bully Bot was awarded as a prize in the original Legendary Swords adventure.

Have you played the new Legendary Swords: Match 3 minigame?

Don’t be fooled (like I was) by the ambiguously phrased Creators’ Blog post title, “New Pet and Store Items” — though there are no new pets, the pet barn has new accessories available for your little friend: a Pom Pom Hat, Pink Bow, and Puffy Coat are each 75 credits.

There’s been more happening with the Creators’ Blog, but we’ll save that for another post! Keep on popping on, Poptropicans. 💫

~🐠

Uncategorized

Keeping tabs on the new inventory 🎒💪 and the old islands

January 13, 2021January 13, 2021 Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans, look inside your bags for a big surprise: the inventory has gotten a refresh, with items now being sorted by categories!

While the Island and Pets tabs have always been there, the old Store tab has expanded into more categories to match the store’s layout. Now we have: Island, Costumes, Followers, Powers, Pranks, Misc, Pets. Check it out by opening your backpack from the menu!

Your items are now sorted in categories corresponding to the store.

It’s great to see Poptropica finally tackle the mess that was the inventory, which used to be a never-ending scroll through a single row of slow-loading item cards. Now, unless you have too few items, you can scroll through two rows at a time, and the speed has improved too.

One feature that could make this even better would be the ability to search for items by typing, with a Google-like autofill as you type to help suggest what you’re looking for without you having to type the whole thing. After all, some of us have years’ worth of items!

And there’s more: if your eye was sharp, you may have noticed something different about one of the item cards shown above. Instead of showing the player’s Poptropican, the Rainbow Ride hoodie has its own model, complete with a pose! In fact, all the new Haxe-era items will have their own posing models. Take a look in the store:

All the new kids are rocking fresh poses.

While it was cool to have your Poptropican model your items before hitting Costumize (and as shown in the first pic, they still do show up for older Flash-era items) — it’s also interesting to see the variety in these new poses and models. Plus, it’s possible that these premade characters shave off loading time, and if that’s the case, it’s certainly welcome.

And look what else… pets know a thing or two about striking poses, too!

In other news, the Grapple-Pap Gift side-quest is gone, as you may have seen from the absence of Clareta’s brother in our pictures from Home Island earlier this week. And there’s one more farewell we need to note…

As of January 12, 2021, Adobe Flash is truly dead. Yes, we did already our goodbyes to Flash in 2020, but now, when you visit Early Poptropica Island on the map (which would have led to all the other classic islands, and is only open to members), you’ll be greeted with a simple box with Flash’s grayed-out icon and an info button. Clicking it leads to Adobe’s page about the Flash Player’s end of life. RIP, our Flashy friend. 🙏

But all is not lost! You can still play several more (though not all) of the classic islands with the Poptropica mobile app, available on iOS and Android. The app includes all the islands currently on Haxe, as well as all episodes of Survival, Mission Atlantis, PoptropiCon, Arabian Nights, and even the original Mythology Island. Even Kira’s Island, the American Girl ad, is somehow on the app, along with Reality TV: Wild Safari, Mystery of the Map, Shrink Ray, and Galactic Hot Dogs.

The app includes classic islands no longer found on the computer version of Pop.

As the islands there don’t seem to be built with either Flash or Haxe, it seems they can hang out there for a while. Who knows, maybe Poptropica will create a connection for accounts between Haxe and the app like they did with Flash, so we can one day sync across on multiple devices again. It doesn’t seem to be a priority now, but we’ll see.

Another solution for accessing the classic islands you can try is idk’s curation of them on Flashpoint, the Flash game preservation project. You can find instructions on the Old Island Directory, which is linked on the PHB’s Glitching page. At this stage, the setup is a little complicated and only available for Windows. But according to the directory, “availability for Mac and Linux is coming soon, along with less complicated instructions” — so stay tuned!

Anyway, that’s all for this post! What do you think of the inventory update? Will you make use of the methods available for playing the classic islands? As always, keep on popping on!

~🐠

Ask Poptropica Siri, Guest Posts

Introducing: Ask the Joker! 🃏

January 11, 2021January 25, 2021 Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans—this is a guest post by Incredible Joker, who is piloting a new series here on the PHB. Got a Poptropica question? Ask the Joker!

Ice cubes! Now that I have gotten your attention with something as cool as I am, let me start explaining what this is all about…

Hello there, I am Incredible Joker and I will be trying out a new old idea. Back in the day, the PHB published a Poptropica fan magazine known as POPCORN or formerly The Poptropican’s 911 (you can read the archives here!). One of the segments in the earlier issues was “Ask PHB,” where the PHB team would answer your Poptropica-related questions.

And now, I’d like to bring that back—with a new flavor. As the PHB team is busy creating other amazing things on this blog, I have taken it into my own hands, or whatever it is we Poptropicans have, to host a Q&A segment here on the PHB. It’s called “Ask the Joker.”

This is where I invite all of you, dear readers, to send in your questions, anything at all — as long as it’s related to Poptropica! It can be about the game or the fandom surrounding it—from island help to glitches to crafting a fashionable seasonal outfit to fan-made art, stories, and so much more—I will try and answer what I can, helpfully and humorously (after all, you are asking a joker!). 😜

As this is just the pilot, we are still working out the structure of these Q&As, like how often it will be and how many questions we will answer in each post. It does depend on how popular this gets (or how little 😅)—so go ahead and share a question (or two or three) with me before you forget what popped to mind!

How can you send in your questions to Ask the Joker?

That’s a great question! You can use the following methods:

📧 Send an email to justaskthejoker (at) gmail (dot) com. This way, you’ll get to keep your questions a surprise when they get answered on the blog.
💬 Comment on the latest Ask the Joker post. Your questions will be publicly visible before they appear in a Q&A post, but this allows others to interact with your question if they so choose. If you don’t have an email address, you can enter a fake one in the email field when you post your comment.

I look forward to receiving and answering your questions in the next Ask the Joker! And for anyone still trying to get some inspiration for their questions, how about checking out the old PHB fan magazines?

Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Incredible Joker. If you’ve got a burning Poptropica question or two, Ask the Joker for a fresh perspective!

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, our Discord server.

📰 If you have an idea for a PHB post, send it in! ✨

Contests, Goofball Island

Goofball Island throws us for a curveball of a recurring dream ✏️🤪

January 10, 2021January 9, 2021 Slanted Fish

After making us wait a week longer than promised, this Thursday Poptropica finally unveiled the next winner of the Design Your Dream Island Contest: Goofball Island by Thirsty Flame!

Here’s the description from the Creators’ Blog announcement:

The plot: In a colorful and bizarre-looking town populated by joke-loving and silly citizens, the evil scientist, Dr. Blandston, has invented a device to take away the town’s color and goofiness. It’s up to you to defeat Dr. Blandston and destroy his machine before he can turn the entire island into a dull, gray, land.

It’s an interesting idea for sure — but one that has, in a similar form, appeared in the Poptropica universe. Though color snatching hasn’t been a theme of any island in the game before, Poptropica did release a book back in 2012 with a similar premise, complete with evil villain.

Pencil Warrior was a 16-page activity book where a mad scientist named Arthur Eraser tries to steal all of Poptropica with his Super Eraser, and use the stolen materials to build his own island, Evil Eraser Island. In the blank spaces of the partially erased scenes in the book, you can draw things to return Poptropica to normalcy, reversing the “colorless chaos.”

Cover of the “Pencil Warrior” activity book

Still, the book is perhaps obscure enough that Goofball Island will feel fresh for most players. Plus, having another delusional doctor in the game checks out, considering the crazes for Drs. Hare and Beev. And “Doctors” is also this month’s theme for Community Creations, so get coloring before an unstable desperado wipes things out!

Unlike with the announcement of Fairy Tale Island, which is slated for 2021, there’s no mention of when Goofball Island will be released. Presumably it’s going to be a while, what with the Creators’ current priorities on converting old islands to the new Haxe build that Poptropica runs on. The Creators also mention that they’ll be announcing more winners, though no timeline this time — it could be another week or more again for all we know. Stay tuned!

Congrats, Thirsty Flame, for dreaming up this future Poptropica island! What are your thoughts on Goofball Island? Intriguing, or just too goofy for its own good? 🤪 Share with us in the comments!

~🐠