Author: Slanted Fish

Hello! I'm Slanted Fish, the editor-in-chief and creator of the Poptropica Help Blog (PHB). I'm a writer, Hong Kong native, and Christ follower. My Poptropica username is slantedfish 🐠 Don't forget to be awesome!
Contests

“Lightning Wielder” dazzles creators of Poptropica’s costume design contest ⚡️

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans, look sharp! The results of Poptropica’s costume design contest (2020 edition) are here. But first, a word from the Pop Creators:

Remember, even if your drawing doesn’t appear on this list, it has without a doubt made a valuable impression on our art team as we move forward into the new year! There will also be more contests and opportunities to be featured on Poptropica very soon. Remember, all art is subjective, so if you didn’t place as high as you would have liked, don’t let it get you down! The best part of this contest was seeing artists of all experience levels share their ideas with us!

(Editor’s note: bold text = PHB’s emphasis added.) And now, onto the winners!

For the grand prize winner, whose design will appear in the game as a costume in the store (and who will also win 6 months of membership): we have Instagram user @bianca_donka for her “Lightning Wielder” creation!

This fantastic character comes with a loaded description written onto the image (which you can click to enlarge). Its standout feature is the lightning arm (with possible space bar action for “cool lightning stuff”), paired with spiky hair, a funky eye, and tattered clothing, including a jacket that doubles as a cape. The space bar action is explored further with an unnamed friend’s idea that it could be “like the prank things that make everyone else see-through or something… makes everyone else have lightning eyes / a floating blue lock.”

Bianca, the character’s creator, goes on to explain that the concept comes from a Poptropica fan comic she’s been writing for the past year (it’s currently on hiatus for mental health reasons, she added). That comic is in the #PoptropicaBreakdown tag on Instagram and is done in a scribbly style with ink pen and color highlighters. Sample below (click arrows to flip pages):

There are currently 20-some parts to the series, labeled in the post description (like P19 for part 19, above). Plus, check out the artist’s Instagram page for more doodles, including some more fun #poptropica stories like this one:

Anyway, back to the costume. “The concept is that the character experiencing this is starting to see glitches in the game and the locks are whether or not the character is ‘editable,’ aka a player or program in the game,” Bianca wrote in the costume’s description. Locks are shown as open on NPCs, and closed on player characters. She also added that this feature might be “too weird or obscure” to be done, so they may not appear in the actual in-game version when it’s created. Either way, we’ve got a dazzling costume to look forward to!

The Poptropica Creators explained their choice like this: “We chose Bianca’s Lightning Wielder for its snappy gesture, sharp silhouette, and strong stylistic integrity to the Poptropica aesthetic! This Poptropican is gonna give Zeus a run for his money, with lightning powers and, might I add, MUCH cooler hair.”

And there’s more from Bianca: just for fun, she also sent in this drawing of Poptropicans with eyebrows and mustaches along with her entry. Gotta love all those facial expressions… even that frown could get a smile out of you.

All right, now for the runners up! These costumes won’t get made into the game, but the designers do each get a month of membership. In no particular order, here’s “Sunflower Cordial” by @otheraccidk, loved for its 70’s style; “Porcelain Chicken” by Noisy Ghost aka @bylophim, with its adorable chick followers; and “Sharp Beatz” by RadioactivePup, designed to react to the background music with its sweet soundbar visor. (Click to enlarge images!)

  • “Sunflower Cordial” by @otheraccidk
  • “Porcelain Chicken” by Noisy Ghost @bylophim
  • “Sharp Beatz” by RadioactivePup

Last but not least, here come the honorable mentions! The ten artists’ social media handles (generally, Instagram) are on their respective artwork, so consider checking out their pages for more great work. Tons of amazing fan artists are also on DeviantArt! As always, you can click to enlarge the images:

Special shout-out to our very own PHB staffer Lucky Joker for being named an honorable mention! He created each of his three designs with gendered versions and placed them on cool backdrops that aren’t seen on the Creators’ Blog, so we’re sharing them here. They’re also on LJ’s Twitter and Instagram!

  • “Masquerade Gala” by Lucky Joker
  • “POP! Comic Craze” by Lucky Joker
  • “Pixie Sprite” by Lucky Joker

That’s it for the 2020 Poptropica costume design winners! Whether or not your entry made it to the list, may you be encouraged by the fact that the Creators loved seeing your work, and go enjoy all the creativity sparked by this talented community. And if you like, share your entries with us in the comments!

Keep a funky eye out for the Lightning Wielder coming to the Store in the near future, and as always, stay popping, Poptropicans. ✌️

Thunderbolts and lightning! Where can a Poptropican find some more frighteningly good fan art? Check out:

We-Love-Poptropica on DeviantArt · Community Creations on the PHB · Pop Fan Artist Spotlights on the PHB · #art channel on the PHC

🌩

Guest Posts, My Place in Poptropica

My Place in Poptropica: Icy Tooth

Slanted Fish

This is the My Place in Poptropica story of Icy Tooth, whose discoveries of progress saving and island guides fueled his enthusiasm for Poptropica. See below for details on how to send in your MPIP story to be published here on the PHB!

Hi! I’m Icy Tooth, and today I’ll be sharing my story of coming to Poptropica!

A rainy school day

It all started back in 2009, on a rainy school day where we were given free time on the computers. My friends and I had no idea what to do when it was our turn on the computers… until I spotted a boy playing a game. It looked really cool, so I asked him what it was.

“Oh, this is Poptropica,” he said. Poptropica — it had a nice ring to it, so I decided to try it out with a few other friends. We all got on, entered the game, and soon, we were hooked. I even remember thinking, how had I not found out about this game sooner?

I looked at all the islands and saw that the boy who’d been playing first was playing Shark Tooth Island, so I decided to play the same one as him. Interacting with the characters was so cool, and the costumes were just awesome. I didn’t even know how to save my account yet.

Making progress

When I got back home from school that day, I decided to search the game up and play it some more. That’s when I found out you could save your account. I was mind-blown by the fact that you could save your progress! And so I kept playing.

Now I was playing Time Tangled Island and I was stuck. I just didn’t know what to do! So I searched up how to complete the island, and that’s how I found the Poptropica Help Blog. Thanks to this amazing website, I finally figured out how to finish the island! As I kept on playing, I would keep checking the Poptropica Help Blog for guides on new islands whenever they were released.

Lost and found

At some point I just forgot about Poptropica, and for a year, I didn’t play. Since I hadn’t written down my password and username, and don’t remember it, I lost all the progress on my first account.       

When I finally picked up Poptropica again a year later in 2011, I made a new account: wewewe2575 (because wewewe was already taken). Nowadays, this is the username I use for games I play, and it all started with Poptropica. This time, I make sure to check in every day, so that I won’t lose my account ever again.

Anyway, I’ve learned a lot from Poptropica and the Poptropica Help Blog—so thank you.

Hope you enjoyed this “My Place in Poptropica” story! If you did, you’ll probably enjoy our other MPIP stories here on the PHB.

If you haven’t already, we invite you to send in your own. Please include your username and at least 500 words, typed with good spelling and grammar, and divided into labeled sections. If you send in your story, we will continue to post new community MPIPs!

Interested in writing for the PHB under a different Pop-topic? Take a look at our Write for the PHB page for ideas, guidelines, and more. We’d love to hear from you!

~the Poptropica Help Blog

Social Media

Choices and compliments in the Year of the Rat

Slanted Fish

Happy Lunar New Year, Poptropicans! 🧧🎊🐲 恭喜發財!

Starting today, we’re ushering in the Year of the Rat, one of the twelve animals in the calendar cycle of the Chinese zodiac. 🐀

Poptropica has joined in the festivities too, with a blog post featuring a big, sorta creepy-looking rodent, and dropping slight hints about what’s to come. (Editor’s note about their picture: Lunar/Chinese New Year certainly begins on the 25th this year, but is celebrated for days afterward!)

This Saturday marks the start of year 4718 of the Chinese calendar, the Year of the Rat!

We’re wishing you guys the best of luck in the coming year, and we’re looking forward to it ourselves! Some big game updates are on the horizon, and we’ll be posting more details about them soon, as well as the results of the art contest!! Stay tuned!

Hmm… “big game updates”… vague but promising. The results of the art contest (the costume design contest, which ended earlier this week) are something more concrete to look forward to, at least!

Also on the blog, Poptropica recently put out a poll asking the all-important question, “Where do you play Poptropica?”, specifically, “phone or computer?” If you haven’t answered yet, you can still cast your vote or change it with a click on the poll post. These are the results as of now:

Out of 650+ votes, the majority (76%) say they play Poptropica on the computer, while almost a fifth (20%) say they play on both, and the remaining minority (6%) are on team phone. Taking the “both” vote into account, that’s 94% who play on the computer and 24% on mobile.

Are you surprised by the results? Do you think this justifies Poptropica’s efforts into building for the newer and ever-rising frontier of mobile gaming, or should they spend more focus on just the desktop game? (Though, with current tech, one probably relates to the other.) Sound off your thoughts in the comments!

This past Friday, January 24 was also Compliment Day, an occasion not quite as historically established as the Lunar New Year but nevertheless also celebrated by Poptropica.

They put out a post with a drawing featuring Myron van Buren giving a friendly compliment to fellow (Pelican Rock?) prison inmate Dr. Hare on just how perfectly evil his vibes are, along with a note of encouragement for all Poptropicans to say a kind word to one another. Good vibes only, y’all. ✌️

Today is Compliment Day! Say something nice to your fellow Poptropican, and let’s show each other how much we appreciate one another! You never know when a small kind word could make someone’s day.

So on that note, here’s a compliment for you, dear reader: great choice of reading material today by being here on the PHB!

But seriously, you matter to us, and to the communities you’re a part of, whether they’re your family, friends, or the collective of Poptropicans on the internet. We’re super grateful that you’re here, and we hope you’ll journey on with us into the coming year as we see what’s next for Poptropica! ✨

~slantedfish (a rat in zodiac)

Contests

Poptropica costume design contest returns

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! This look familiar? 👀

If you’ve been here a while, you may recall when Poptropica ran a contest called #MyPoptropicaCostume back in 2016–17, inviting Poptropicans to design their dream costume and promising to create the winning designs in the game. And now, in 2020, it’s back!

Really, it’s pretty much the same concept, as you might’ve guessed by the use of the exact same picture. Here are the general guidelines, though you’ll want to refer to the Creators’ Blog post for full rules:

  • Create with any method you like, whether it’s drawn digitally or made physically and then scanned or photographed.
  • Add details about your costume, and give it a name.
  • Create something that can be reproduced as a costume in-game, meaning avoid super-small details or too much color.
  • Be original — don’t imitate copyrighted media.
  • Up to three entries per person.
  • Include your Poptropican’s name in your entry, and send it along to [email protected] with your first name as well. Optional: Include your social media handle to shoutout if you’re selected as a winner.

You have from now till January 21 (Tuesday) at midnight Eastern time to enter, giving you almost two weeks to dream and deliver.

Winners of the 2017 Poptropica costume contest — Creepy Peanut and Speedy Toes — had their designs made in Poptropica Worlds.

And did we mention the prizes? One grand prize winner gets their design made as a costume in the Poptropica Store, plus an NPC on Home Island will be wearing it, and there’s a 6-month membership to be had! As for the runners up, of which there will be three: one month of membership and their designs featured on the official blog. For ten honorable mentions, just the latter.

They did make a few changes to the distribution of winners and prizes compared to last time, probably due to their track record of not exactly delivering on all their promises back in 2017.

First, it took nearly a whole year since the grand prize winners were selected for their designs to actually be created and implemented into the game, and they were only made for Poptropica Worlds—which at the time was still the primary version Poptropica, but is pretty inactive these days.

Then, the top ten runners up were supposed to have their costumes made into the game as well, but that never materialized. I for one would still like to see Lucky Joker’s “Diwali Inspired” or Perfect Sky’s “Jazz Musician” created on Poptropica, but you can at least find their designs here.

  • “Diwali Inspired” by Lucky Joker
  • “Jazz Musician” by Perfect Sky

Anyway, it’s cool to see the Poptropica costume design contest return, and the promise of a stupendous fashion stunner coming soon to a game screen near us. What are you waiting for? That could very well be your design!

~/🐠

Blast from the Past, PHB Specials

Preserving Poptropica post-Flash 💥

Slanted Fish

Hey, Poptropicans—welcome to 2020. As you may have heard, this year will bring about the end of Adobe Flash, the engine that much of Poptropica runs on. The implications are huge for this game, and we’ve already seen it affecting 30 of the oldest islands and many more features.

Here on the PHB, we’ve mentioned the Flash issue here and there, but now we’re taking the opportunity to make a whole post hashing out what’s happening, what it means, and where it’s all going. So let’s get started!

1. Where are the old islands?

In July 2019, Poptropica removed 30 islands from the map. They were all considered “old school islands”: Poptropica’s earliest islands, created and released from 2007–2013, which were built using ActionScript 2 (AS2), a programming language primarily used for the Adobe Flash Player platform.

The good news is, you can still play the old school islands using the Old Island Directory created by the glitcher idk. Although they’re currently inaccessible from the game itself, it’s possible that the old islands will return. Poptropica’s reason for taking them down, for the time being, was because they were “causing a lot of problems for players.”

2. Poptropica’s Promises

On the first day of the new year, Poptropica posted the following on Instagram: “2020 is going to great [sic] — a non-Flash version of the game, new islands, the return of some old islands, and so much more!!!” (Our emphasis added.) So, there’s hope yet that the old islands will return—but as the Instagram post indicates, it may not be all of them.

A fan-made Poptropica map with most of the islands, created by idk.

We’re not sure which ones are coming back and which ones might not make it, nor do we know why, but perhaps there’s only so much they can work with. Still, in addition to directly playing them via the Old Island Directory, you can also relive their memories with the PHB’s collection of Island Guides.

3. What does it mean that Flash is going away?

Adobe Flash Player was an instrumental engine for a lot of the early internet, particularly for games, video, and animations. Poptropica is among the many websites that used Flash, just like other popular game sites of the 2000s and 2010s, like Club Penguin and Neopets. For those of us who’ve grown up playing these games, losing Flash is not just saying goodbye to outdated technology, but watching whole worlds from our childhoods crumble away. RIP. 😢

And yet, Flash is going away simply because tech has evolved for the better—modern web browsers have adapted to HTML5, and the end of Flash also means better security and battery life. So, if Poptropica is to continue, they’ll need to keep up with the tech and move off of Flash… which is what they’ve been working on for the past few years, even though this has meant fewer islands and more cosmetic changes—and yes, even the seemingly odd creation of Poptropica Worlds, built with Unity and launched in 2017.

Newer islands, which have a larger screen and ambient music, were built with ActionScript 3 (AS3), which is more compatible with current desktop standards as well as the rise of mobile applications. We started calling these islands SUIs, which stands for Sound-Updated Islands.

In 2013, Poptropica launched a beta version of 24 Carrot as an SUI called BETA Carrotene, and after fixing up some bugs, they were ready to roll out Virus Hunter, the first official SUI. From then on, all islands were released as SUIs, and sometimes the Creators even went back and re-made a former island, like Time Tangled or Mythology, into an SUI. Unlike older islands, these newer SUIs are able to survive without Flash, which is why islands now come as SUIs.

4. Poptropica’s Progress

Poptropica Worlds was intended to be Poptropica’s solution to the post-Flash dilemma, but for some reason, things didn’t quite pan out. By 2019, it wasn’t being updated anymore and was even actively hidden from the homepage. Instead, many of Worlds’ standout features have since been integrated into the original Poptropica, like device syncing and player clubhouses.

Poptropica even wrote in their recap of 2019 that many of that year’s updates were “a really important part of the conversion process for getting the game off of Flash” suggesting that their post-Flash solution will focus not on Worlds, but on the original Poptropica. Some more of these updates over the past year include a new layout for friends and the store, SUI-ified common rooms, and plus, who could forget the adorable pets?

However, the shiny new things are eclipsed by the loss of many beloved classic features that may or may not be compatible with the future of technology—such as the old school islands.

We’ve also lost a lot of old costumes and items, mostly from the store, though some are gradually coming back through each new monthly rotation of store items. We’ve lost friend features like the ability to add by username, viewing medallions, and even the Multiverse (and tribe!) party rooms. Island photos were replaced by Photo Booth pics, but even the Photo Booth is currently down, with no word on when it may return.

Still, if Poptropica’s previous statements are worth their salt, perhaps there’s still hope yet for a brighter Poptropica post-Flash…

5. Poptropica’s Future

As Poptropica has stated here and there, they are working on porting the game over to newer technology, so that it can live on even after the plug is pulled on Flash. Poptropica Original is here to stay, continuing its legacy both in the web browser and now on mobile devices.

We’re likely to see at least some of the old islands return, based on Poptropica’s Instagram post mentioned above. And they’ve mentioned working on “new islands” as well, including, most recently, the announcement that Zomberry Island will be back—with a new level!

Also, though Poptropica hasn’t confirmed anything specific, perhaps we can still hold out some hope for the return of some of the beloved features we’ve lost, or at least see them morph into viable alternatives.

After all, even Realms disappeared for over a year before it finally returned in late 2018. Meanwhile, Multiverse may be gone, but now we have player clubhouses (introduced in late 2018) to meet up with friends. While they’ve still got some work to do to really make clubhouses as big of a hit as Multiverse was (namely, being able to easily find specific friends whose houses you want to pop into), it’s a promising start to a new era for Poptropica.

Whatever happens, we’ll be here to watch it all go down.

With cautious optimism,

—the PHB 💙