Category: Contests

Contests, Poptropolis Games Island, Tribes

PHB Tribal Tournament: Genius Games 💪🧠

Lucky Joker
phbtribe20_round2

Welcome, Poptropicans, to the second round of the 2020 PHB Tribal Tournament! (Don’t know what’s going on? Check out our introductory post.) Note: The first round, Creative Competitors, carries on for the rest of the month, so keep sending in the awesome artwork.

“No pain, no gain”? More like “no brain, no gain” because this round is here to get you thinking. And you’ve got to think fast, too, since this round ends in just one week (Monday, August 17). It comes in three parts, so opportunities abound to earn points for your tribe. Let’s dive right into it!

Caption Challenge

In this challenge, you’re presented with a picture, and your task is to come up with a caption to go with it. The concept is simple, but the execution will require some careful thought. Your caption can be funny, serious, and anything in between. Just be sure it’s not longer than two sentences!

Each person can enter up to three captions for the contest, with 10 points earned per caption. You could speak from a character or even an inanimate object in the scene, narrate as an onlooker, borrow a line from something in pop culture, make a self-aware comment—as long as it’s interesting, and it suits the picture. So what’s the pic? Here it is!

Caption this!

Tricky Trivia

For this segment, there are 20 trivia questions about Poptropica; some are easy while others are more difficult. You don’t need to answer all of them, but do your best! For every question you do answer correctly, you’ll earn 10 points for your tribe. That’s up to 200 points!

Points for this game are earned collectively as a tribe — not on an individual basis. So, if there’s one you’re not sure about, chances are that one of your tribemates is, and can score the points for your team!

For this specific game, make sure to send your responses to your tribe representative via direct message on Discord, or send us an email, so as to not spoil the fun for your fellow tribe members. It’s fairer for everyone to be able to guess at their own speed. 🙂

  1. Who created Poptropica?
  2. What was the 32nd island released?
  3. Poptropica’s in-game currency is called what?
  4. What year was the Friends feature implemented?
  5. How many islands have a bonus quest?
  6. When was Early Poptropica (the settlement) founded?
  7. Who was CJ’s role model on Shrink Ray Island?
  8. Why is Crusher wanted in prison?
  9. What are the nine flavor variations of PopGum that exist?
  10. Which iconic character had their name changed due to legal issues?
  11. What event, on Mystery Train Island, is the train headed to?
  12. Where did Flambe, the prison chef, receive his/her culinary training?
  13. What weight does the weight guesser incorrectly predict your Poptropican to be on Monster Carnival Island?
  14. On Counterfeit Island, how long was the museum security guard’s break from his Monday night shift?
  15. How much does an ECO-Bike cost at Twin Palms Mall?
  16. How could one originally gain access to play the Blimp Adventure mini-quest?
  17. Who is buried in the plot A42 at Hemlock cemetery?
  18. What are Zeke Weke’s three favorite musical artists?
  19. On which island is the Grease Monkey building located?
  20. How many islands has Smokey Chinchilla completed?

Trace that place

Oh, the places you’ll go! We travel far and wide across Poptropica aboard our little yellow blimp and see so many wondrous things. But, how well do we really pay attention to the details? For this game, your task is to pinpoint which island each of these snippets is taken from.

All pics are open to all tribes to guess! Each correctly guessed photo counts for 10 points within a tribe, not per person.

As with “Tricky Trivia,” please send your answers to your tribe rep through direct message or email. Be sure to clarify which picture(s) you’re guessing, using the labels.

  • Flying Squid #1
  • Flying Squid #2
  • Black Flags #1
  • Black Flags #2
  • Nanobots #1
  • Nanobots #2
  • Nightcrawlers #1
  • Nightcrawlers #2
  • Yellowjackets #1
  • Yellowjackets #2
  • Wildfire #1
  • Wildfire #2
  • Seraphim #1
  • Seraphim #2
  • Pathfinders #1
  • Pathfinders #2

Presenting the Creative Competitors MVP

Last week in our initiatory post, we said for each round we’d be recognizing a Most Valuable Player (MVP), someone whose dedication and enthusiasm stood out from the rest. This week’s shining star, who so far has already entered a number of costumes based on her tribe’s colors, as well as a few of her drawings, is Magic Flipper of Flying Squid!

Congratulations, you just won a membership! Keep up with the good work and high energy. You’re doing awesome. 👑

Could you be the next MVP? We’ll all have to wait and see. Until then…

Have fun, and best of luck!

– the PHB tribe reps –

Noveen (Black Flags), Sporty Boa (Flying Squid), Spotted Dragon (Nanobots), Slanted Fish (Nightcrawlers), Lucky Joker (Pathfinders), Gentle Dolphin (Seraphim), Fierce Flyer (Wildfire), & Silver Wolf (Yellowjackets)

Join us on the PHC Discord and let us know which tribe you’re in!

Contests, Poptropolis Games Island, Tribes

The torch has been lit for the 2020 PHB Tribal Tournament! 🏹🔥

Lucky Joker

Welcome, Poptropicans, to the 2020 PHB Tribal Tournament! Can you believe it’s been 4 years since the last one? Although the Tokyo Olympic Games that were set to take place this year have been postponed until 2021, that doesn’t mean we can’t compete head-to-head… in Poptropica!

Here;s how this works: You pick a tribe (one of the 8 tribes from Poptropolis Games Island), then check the PHB for our competitions (we’ll have a new one each week this month) and compete for points for your tribe… and maybe even a Poptropica membership for yourself!

The Tribes of Poptropica, from left to right, top to bottom: Flying Squid, Wildfire, Yellowjackets, Pathfinders, Black Flags, Nightcrawlers, Seraphim, Nanobots. Pick wisely, because in this tournament, you can’t switch sides!

It’s more fun on Discord

Throughout the tournament, you can meet and hang out with your fellow tribe-mates (and competitors) through our kid-friendly, moderated Discord server, the PHC (Poptropica Help Chat). It’s free, quick, and easy to join!

On the PHC, we’ll have special chat channels for each tribe—to join yours, simply message a PHC staff member (PHB staff, PHC overlords, and guardians) to request the role of your chosen tribe and someone will add you in as soon as possible. No one outside your tribe can see your tribe’s channel besides PHC staff. You can use it to talk with new friends about anything from sharing your entries to the competitions to your ideal breakfast of champions!

Plus, each tribe will have a representative (mostly PHB staff) who you can message anytime with questions or just to have a friendly face who’s on your side in the tribal games. These are the reps for each tribe:

  • 🏴 Black Flags – Noveen, our Poppies Popular Poptropican of the Year
  • 🦑 Flying Squid – Sporty Boa
  • 🤖 Nanobots – Spotted Dragon
  • 🐛 Nightcrawlers – Slanted Fish
  • 🧭 Pathfinders – Lucky Joker
  • 👼 Seraphim – Gentle Dolphin
  • 🔥 Wildfire – Fierce Flyer
  • 🐝 Yellowjackets – Silver Wolf, a former PHB author

You can find the PHC by going to the Community tab in the PHB menu, and once you’re in, the server will stay with your Discord account.

Now allow us to announce… the Creative Competitors round!

Round 1: Creative Competitors

It’s time to rally up some spirit and get artsy! To compete in Creative Competitors, all you have to do is create Poptropica fan art and share it with us. The best way to do that is to post it to your tribe’s channel on the PHC, but you can also contact us in other ways.

Each creation will be worth 10 points, so the more you send in, the more you’ll earn for your tribe! Acceptable art forms include:

  • Visual pieces (can be traditional or digital)
  • Written pieces (a fan fiction, a cheer, poem, song, etc.)
  • In-game costumes (see what you can do with your tribe’s colors!)

This round will transpire throughout the entire tournament — but don’t hesitate to start creating now! Incidentally, our theme for Community Creations this month is also Tribes, so if you can create something tribe-inspired, you’ll be entering two contests in one!

🌟 As we mentioned earlier, yes, you can win a membership! In each round, we’ll be picking an MVP (Most Valuable Player) whose participation we think stands out most, to win a one-month Poptropica membership. It could be you! 🌟

Many of you expressed a hankering for more community activities at the Poppies last week, so we hope you’ll have just as much fun participating in this quadrennial event. Stay tuned, because there’s more to come!

The next round (which has yet to be announced) will commence next week on Monday, August 10. You won’t want to miss it! But right now…

🏹 Let the Games begin! 🔥

– the PHB tribe reps –

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

🌩

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 poptropicacontest@gmail.com 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!

~/🐠

Contests

And the winners of PHB’s Halloween Eleven are… 👀

Slanted Fish

…about to be announced in just a bit. Halloween is here, which means it’s time for us to show off the most bone-chilling costumes of the season! You ready?

This year for our annual Halloween costume contest, we hosted two categories: Heavenly & Hellish. We’ve combed our way through all your crazy cool costumes, and for each category, we’ve picked our top three and selected a grand prize winner for each. So without further ado, we now present:

✨ Heavenly ✨

With this being year eleven, we thought we’d turn our eyes to the heavens. And so this category called for a different kind of creativity from years past, by focusing on the cute, charming, and classy styles of costuming. Among those who took on the challenge, we landed on the following trio as our top picks, with Jean of Pop’s “Heavenly Healer” (pictured center) taking the prize.

  • “Butterfly Goddess” by Moody Beetle
  • “Heavenly Healer” by Jean of Pop
  • “Paper Roman” by MM

🔥 Hellish 🔥

Of course, we couldn’t get away from the truly scary stuff either… which brings us to our other category. Inspired by all things devilish, deviant, and depraved, we bring to you our top picks from the depths of a hellish world (in an embellished sense). Among them, we crown Quick Fang’s “Red-eyed Zombie Monster Carnie” (pictured center) as the spookiest of all.

  • “Dark Moth” by Bubby
  • “Red-eyed Zombie Monster Carnie” by Quick Fang
  • “The Experiment” by ThePieSkyHigh

Congratulations to the winners and runner-ups! All of these spectacular outfits will be immortalized on our Costumes page. As for our grand prize winners, Jean of Pop and Quick Fang, do check your emails for the PHB’s message to follow up on receiving your membership prize. Happy Hallo-winning!

🎃 Honorable Mentions 🎃

In addition to the above, we also want to spotlight a handful of other costumes that caught our eye. Better watch your back with these folks around!

  • “Flower Angel” by Rexovia
  • “Galarian Ponyta” by Silver Coyote
  • “Zeus’ Guard” by ThePieSkyHigh
  • NJDevilsPride’s “Evil Island-Hopping Skeleton” with haunting effects
  • “Eye Bleeding Nightmare” by Moody Beetle
  • “Forky Headless Horseman” by TailsFan0707
  • “Poptropica Witch” by Quick Fang
  • “The Clown” by Rexovia
  • “Witch Doctor” by Jean of Pop

👻 PHB Staff Showcase 👻

And there’s one more gallery left to show off! The PHB staff team decided to join in on the fun with each of us choosing a side—Team Heavenly or Hellish—and costumizing our Poptropicans accordingly. Here are the results!

  • Sporty Boa (Team Heavenly)
  • Gentle Dolphin (Team Heavenly)
  • Lucky Joker (Team Heavenly)
  • Slanted Fish (Team Hellish)
  • Spotted Dragon (Team Hellish)
  • Fierce Flyer (Team Hellish)

What a hauntingly beautiful collection of eye-dizzying costumes! Whether you’re feeling cute or menacing this Halloween, we hope you enjoy this season with all the spooky shenanigans it brings. If nothing else, feel free to check out the rest of the inventive costumes in the comments of the contest post.

🎃🍬 Happy Halloween! 🍬🎃

— from your friends at the Poptropica Help HORROR Blog —