Category: Guest Posts

Guest posts are blog posts that are written by Poptropicans who are not staff writers on the PHB team at the time of writing. Interested in contributing? Check out our “Write for the PHB” guide under the Contact tab up top.

Guest Posts, Popspiracy Theories

Popspiracy: Who is this suspicious scarred dude?

Slanted Fish

(Hey Poptropicans! This is a guest post by LillySparkle$, who also blogs with her friend Mia at Pop Blog. In this post, she’ll share a theory about an unknown character from a sneak peek! Please note that the thoughts below are imagined, and not to be taken as fact. Enjoy! –🐠)

Hello! I am Lilly, aka Maroon Jumper from the PopBlog, and I’ve got a theory about a character to share with you all. As you may recall, recently some new Pop Worlds-style preview pictures were added to the App Store description for the Poptropica app. This one, in particular, caught my eye:

Challenge Your Friends

There are many new characters here, as you can tell, but it’s the main guy – the largest one -who caught my eye. His overall appearance looks villainous, and he’s also completely new – never seen on Poptropica before (I asked around to make sure I hadn’t missed anything!).  He’s quite an intriguing character, so here are my thoughts on him:

  • He seems to be a villain (obviously). With his red scar, evil grin, excessive facial hair, it’s safe to say he’s up to no good.
  • He dresses the part, too. Layered in thick blue clothing and carrying a satchel. Thick layers could mean he is in a cold climate, which leads us to our next topic…

Where is he from? Well, since he is so layered, and perhaps he got his scar from some tragic accident, my guess is that he came from the mines.

If you haven’t caught on, I’m referring to Crisis Caverns, an island rumored to appear on Poptropica Worlds. It was supposed to come to Poptropica in early 2015, but has since been cancelled.

Anyway, my theory is that this man – let’s just call him, uh, Scar (wow. creative.) – well, he was a miner in the Caverns, when one day he was in an accident and got a horrible scar. He became obsessed with all the exquisite and rare jewels that the mine had to offer, and greedily wanted them for himself. He’s stolen a lot already, and continues to steal. That’s where you come in, having to stop his shenanigans.

This was the sneak peek that inspired my theory:

In her post showing these Crisis Caverns leaks, Perfect Sky theorizes that this could be the final place you visit in the mines. It could, and to me, it also looks like a hideout – possibly that of the evil, overgrown-facial-haired Scar.

Please note: I am only making these guesses on a couple of pictures and a poor imagination. 😂 For all I know, Scar could just be a costume and have nothing to do with Crisis Caverns at all.

That concludes my Popspiracy theory! Thank you guys so much for reading this! What do you guys think? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

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Hope you enjoyed this guest post by LillySparkle$!

The PHB welcomes guest posting from anyone in our community if you have something to share, whether it be sneak peeks, My Place in Poptropica stories, or any other ideas you might have. We also encourage sharing on the PHC.

If you have an idea for a guest post, send it in to [email protected]! :)

Guest Posts, Realms

Pre-Realms Tour: The Land of Chole

Slanted Fish

(Hey Poptropicans! This is a guest post written by Sticky Clown, in which he gives a tour of his Pre-Realms Land creation, Chole. Enjoy! –🐠)

chole

Hello everyone! I am Sticky Clown, or SC if you’d like. I go by Starving Cereal on WordPress.

Today I wish to show you something a bit old, just for fun to distract from the Poptropica World stuff going on currently. It is my old home. As in, from Poptropica Land (that was the prototype before Realms, for those who don’t know). Now, a few of you who have known me since ye old glory days may object to what I am doing, as I have previously posted this on a few other blogs. But the reason I’m doing this is – well, there’s many. They are:

  1. While Poptropica Land is about three years old, it’s still very similar to Realms and should be easy to digest. Plus, I’d say this can qualify as a period piece.
  2. This is not going to be the exact same as that post I’ve made elsewhere. I have added several extra thoughts as well as some modifications. This is going to be 2-3 times as big as the original, at least.
  3. Soon I hope to be doing a tour of my Realms, Chole (the code for that is 3vpqv, if you’re interested in checking it out for yourself </plug>). Think of this as a prelude to my adventure, a point which you can use for comparison.
  4. And finally… I’m an egocentric bigoted unsatisfiable superficial narcissist hungering for infinite fame on the interwebs, ready to repost old posts just to gain more attention, even if it is based on a game aimed towards children.

So yeah, I think I’ve justified myself sufficiently. Let’s start on this wonderful journey, shall we? 🙂

To start, here is the bridge to my house – my first ever build!

image6

Yeah… it’s a bit crappy. I’m not very fond of this myself, and that’s discarding everything else I’ve built. Let’s concentrate on the bridge as we cross it with my Mocktropica Narf companion, Narfy.

Continue reading “Pre-Realms Tour: The Land of Chole” →

My Place in Poptropica

My Place in Poptropica: TylerMaster

Slanted Fish

This is the My Place in Poptropica story of TylerMaster, a longtime Poptropica glitcher who continues to discover new things to this day. See below for how to send in your own MPIP!

mpip tyler

2007-2009 | The Start of My Adventures

I started playing Poptropica in 2007, very close to when it first came out, and I was seven years old at the time. I discovered the game at school and I had lots of fun playing it.

When I first started playing Poptropica, there was no friends list or anything like that. But I still had lots of fun beating islands.

Then one day, in 2009, I saw that they had added something new: the Store! So I saved up as many credits as I could get so that I could get lots of items. I had lots of fun doing that, but eventually got bored of it, so I took a break for a while.

2009-2010 | Returning and Discovering Glitching

So one day I was bored at school and decided to revisit Poptropica – and I immediately fell back in love with it!

As I was playing one day, I figured out some of the keyboard commands, such as Ctrl + Shift + S which changes your skin color (only works on non-SUIs). From there, I wanted to learn more cheats, and thus began my adventures in glitching. I learned all I could, from the ASG (Avatar Studio Glitch) to the CEG (Customize Everything Glitch, now done with MAP or iPop).

One day, I learned that there were different websites dedicated to glitching, such as DummyTron and MAP. Creating dummies was a ton of fun. I also used websites like PoptropAds to teleport to various retired advertisement buildings and games.

2010–2015 | Zombie Eyes

At some point I got bored of Poptropica again, and took another break. A whole year passed before I decided to come back to Poptropica.

When I returned, I found out that most of the glitches I’d enjoyed had been patched, although some of them were still around, like the ASG.

Anyway, one day I came across the PHB’s chat hangout, the PHC, and decided to join. My first friend on there was Red Lizard, also known as RL, and my second friend was NinjaDude, or ND. I really wanted to get zombie eyes on my Poptropican, so RL, ND, and I started poking around with Poptropica’s files trying to find some way to get them. Every day, our mission seemed to get more and more hopeless – until one day, RL made our first breakthrough! He’d found a temporary way to get the zombie eyes.

Eventually, as we got more people involved in our project, we decided we would only share our findings among each other. One day, I made the final breakthrough with figuring out a way to get zombie eyes permanently. But there was this one person who kept bugging me about them, so I gave in and shared my method. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the first thing that person did was turn around and leak the secret to the world.

2015–present | The Glitching Journey Continues

Seeing all my involvement with Poptropica, my parents decided that I should take a break from it for a while. So I did, for a few months.

When I returned, the PHC had moved to a different website (Discord instead of Xat), but it was still the PHC. My friend RL had made many more breakthroughs with glitching, including figuring out how to make dummies again. And there was now a tool called iPop, developed by Santorno, which RL had pro access to (which gives a few extra options that the public access key doesn’t).

Well, back when we had been working on obtaining dummy eyes together, we’d made a pact that we would always share new discoveries with each another. So he taught me about making dummies, but I was not allowed to get the pro access to iPop.

Anyway, I continued to spend time on Discord, and we made many more breakthroughs. We discovered the developer console and used that for a while, until the password to the dev console changed one day. But that was ok; we had discovered other things, like leaks for the rumored Crisis Caverns Island, how to make custom costume parts, and how to unpatch old costume parts.

To this day, the joy of glitching continues, and we are still discovering new things. And that’s My Place in Poptropica. If you’d like to add me, my user is jellal2876534.

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Hope you enjoyed this “My Place in Poptropica” story! Feel free to send in your own (please include a minimum of 550 words, type with good spelling and grammar, divide it into labeled sections, and include your username). If you send in your story, we will continue to post new community MPIPs!

~the Poptropica Help Blog

Escape from Pelican Rock Island, Guest Posts, Reality TV Island

Tips & Tricks for Escape From Pelican Rock and Reality TV Island

Slanted Fish

(Hey Poptropicans! This is a guest post written by Gentle Fang, a Poptropica player in the community. In this post, she’ll be sharing some game tips, particularly for last month’s Islands of the Month, Escape From Pelican Rock and Reality TV. Enjoy! –🐠)

tips efpr rtv

Since Poptropica’s kickoff in 2007, we have seen many islands, each filled to the brim with adventures, puzzles, brainteasers, and fun. But within this wonderful world, there are also secrets that may not be obvious, things that I’ve picked up on through my experiences of playing the game. (For example, did you know that the later episodes of Survival Island are based on the short story The Most Dangerous Game? There’s a PHB post about it here.)

Anyway, this post will be all about these cool tips and tricks! I’ll be sharing with you all some tricks to help you succeed, cultural references, and other neat facts that you may or may not have caught onto.

General Tip: Explore around instead of overlooking things.

If you climb on the tops of buildings, you can find things and meet characters that, while maybe not important to the story, can be just as interesting as the people and things below.

An example of this can be found on Reality TV Island. If you jump to the top of one building, you see a woman holding a camera. She is not part of the story, but what she tells you is a hint about finding a celebrity in the motel.

Similarly, if you go inside buildings they might not seem important, you can still find super cool stuff, some of which you may need during the island quest. In 24 Carrot Island, I got my super cool bright teal hair from drinking the juice that changes your hair color. While not necessary, I do now look a lot cooler than I did before with my typical blonde hair!

Now we get into the specifics…

Although it’s March, I wrote this in February, so in honor of February’s Islands of the Month, I’ll share my tips about Reality TV and Escape from Pelican Rock. These are both some of my favorite islands. The competition of Reality TV really drew me in, as well as the fun escapades of EFPR.

Tips for: Escape From Pelican Rock Island

efpr2bfloodlight

In Escape from Pelican Rock, we have a prison on top of an island, with the city in the distance. The security is higher than that of the other prisons, like Azkaban from Harry Potter. As the guard with the brown hair so eloquently put it, “Break the prison rules, and you come here.” It’s a lot like a former real-life prison in California: Alcatraz.

For those who don’t know, Alcatraz was the highest security prison in America. It was where the worst criminals went, and it was home to many psychopathic people. The only comfort was the sea air, which has been eroding Alcatraz. Very few people were known to escape, and often they were later proclaimed dead. In short, it was a tough place.

Now for some tips regarding the island:

Get out of prison in 7 days

During the mini-game where you make license plates for cars, which is very boring and generally just a waste of time, I figured out that – assuming you made 7 sticks of gum per day (to the point where the machine breaks down) – you could get out of prison in 7 days.

On the first day, your character only makes 5 sticks of gum, not wanting to make the machine overheat. In total, to complete all purchases, you need 21 sticks of gum. So, you would need a total of three days of playing the game to get the total amount of gum. With four days gone (first day + 3 work days), you only need to work the day you overwork the machine and sharpen your spoon (day 5), and the day before your escape when you have fixed the air vents (day 6). On day 7, you can escape.

Trapped in vents?

When you are in the ventilation corridor right above the mess hall, if you misstep for any reason, you can fall through the vents into the kitchen. If this happens, don’t panic: the guards will not find you in the kitchen. While you can decide to take stuff or stir the mashed potatoes while you are down there, it is of no significance.

Instead, in order to get back up, go to Home Island and click on the island icon that shows up below the blimp to continue. This will restart you from the end of mess hall.

Skip (most) meals

Uh, Cook’s food tastes disgusting. You can never stomach her food, and the twins are pretty sure that s/he never trained at the Cordon Bleu. (I certainly agree…) So with that being said, do you really have to sit through mess hall? The answer is no.

The exceptions are: on the first day when you get your second spoon, and when you get the noodles, as well as when you dump plaster into the potatoes and start the food fight. All of the other days, it is not important in the slightest to sit down. The people say the same things every day.

With that being said, if Alcatraz was still operating with all of the breaking and entering I’ve done in Poptropica, I would be there!

Tips for: Reality TV Island

balanced diet

Well, look at you! You managed to get onto a Reality TV show! And now you have to pick off the other seven contestants in an array of mini games! Well, while someone has to get voted off every round, there are definitely ways that you can minimize your chances of being that person.

Here are my top three tips for Reality TV Island:

Pay attention to what people are saying!

If Merry Muse says that she’s in it to win it and Sickly Skull says she doesn’t care, it might not seem important. But it actually is. The more devoted a person is to winning, the longer they tend to last, and the less likely they are to get voted off.

Therefore, you want the person in the final round to be someone who cares the minimal amount. I know this seems crazy, but I have played the game multiple times and found this to be true for me.

Geyser Guess

In Geyser Guess, the mini-game where you step on different geysers and contestants are eliminated one by one, it seems all you can do is cross your fingers and hope for the best. That’s true for the first round.

However, after the first person gets eliminated (hopefully it isn’t you), your strategy should be to pick the geyser that just exploded. Based on my experience, it’s less likely to erupt again because it already did. Using this strategy, I have won multiple times.

Don’t sweat it

If you know you cannot win no matter what you do, don’t sweat it. Unless it’s the last round, chances are, people will either vote off the person who came in second place (because they are a threat) or will vote off someone who constantly wins but didn’t this round. If you come in dead last, you are actually one of the least likely to get voted off.

With that being said, I wish you luck on your drama-filled adventures with the seven other characters you’re up against. Grandma Gracey and Merry Muse hate me for some reason, no matter how many times I play. Honestly, they’re probably just jealous of my gorgeous hair. (I’m so vain…)

This also concludes February’s Island of the Month hints. If you guys like this, I may do one for March’s Islands as well!

-Gentle Fang

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Hope you enjoyed this guest post by Gentle Fang!

The PHB welcomes guest posting from anyone in our community if you have something to share, whether it be sneak peeks, My Place in Poptropica stories, or any other ideas you might have. We also encourage sharing on the PHC (Poptropica Help Chat).

If you have an idea for a guest post, send it in to [email protected]! :)

 

Guest Posts, Pop 5

Pop 5: Ideas for Multiplayer Features

Slanted Fish

(Hey Poptropicans! This is a guest post written by TallMelonisCool, a Poptropica player in the community. In this post he’ll be sharing his ideas for more features in multiplayer rooms. Enjoy! –🐠)

pop5-multiplayer

Hey guys! So, I like popping into common rooms a lot on Poptropica to chat with, battle, and friend other Poptropicans. Although it’s pretty fun, I think there are some features that could be introduced to make multiplayer on Poptropica even better. Hopefully, the Creators can consider these ideas for the future, and I also hope you guys like these ideas. Let’s go!

1. Make it easier to view who’s currently in the multiplayer room

In order to show the options for chatting, battling, or friending someone in a multiplayer room, the player you click on has to be standing still – but sometimes, they just will not stop moving!

What they should do is have a window you can open or close that lists all the players currently in the room, as well as options next to them that say Chat / Battle / Friend. Prompting any of these actions would bring your Poptropican over to them if you aren’t already there, so they can see that you’re interested in interacting with them.

2. Show what the other player is busy with

You know when you really want to chat or battle with a Poptropican, but they’re always busy? Well, I’d love to know just what they’re busy with. Whether it’s looking through their backpack items, browsing the store, or checking out their friends’ profiles, I’d like to see the message “Sorry, I’m busy right now” changed to something that indicated what they were up to.

They could even have a feature where you can click on options for feelings (like the ones on your friend profile), so you can tell others something like, “I’m feeling happy/sad/sleepy right now.”

3. Option to choose who your chat question is directed to

Not everyone knows this, but when you chat with someone, every Poptropican in the room gets to answer the question. This is cool sometimes, but not always. It’s not so great when you just want to battle someone but they’re taking a while to answer and then a question comes up that delays them even further. Instead, you should have the option to either ask everyone the question, or just the one player you clicked on when you pressed Chat.

They should also add the option to enable/disable receiving questions if you don’t want to chat at a certain time.

4. A new mini-game

I play a lot of head-to-head game battles in the multiplayer rooms, and I really do mean a lot. So sometimes, I wish there were more options for games to play. Poptropica has only twice added more games to the collection, when Soupwords first came out in 2008 and Pathwise in 2009.

Anyway, here are some games I’d like to play multiplayer on Poptropica:

  • Chess: This game has lots of skill involved, though it tends to take longer to finish than the other games usually do. Still, we already have Sudoku, which also takes a while to finish a round.
  • Switch: Switch is currently a single-player game only, but I can easily see this game becoming a multiplayer game. It could be a timed game where the winner is whoever scores the highest by racking up the best combos.
  • Circle Tap: Imagine a whiteboard with a circle (or a dot). The goal is to click on the circle before the other player does. Once it’s clicked, it will move to a different position, and you’ll try to click on it again before the other player clicks on it, and on it goes. The first to click the circle 10 times wins!

5. More actions (emotes)

Multiplayer rooms already come with a few actions, which you can perform by pressing the emoticons on the right side. But multiplayer rooms could be even more social with some more emotes. Here are some ideas:

  • waving a hand
  • tap dance
  • fold arms
  • looking up
  • clapping
  • hands on waist
  • hands in the air
  • sit down for two seconds

Alright, that’s all I have now, guys. Thanks for reading, and if you have any comments or suggestions of your own, please leave them down below!

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Hope you enjoyed this guest post by TallMelonisCool!

The PHB welcomes guest posting from anyone in our community if you have something to share, whether it be sneak peeks, My Place in Poptropica stories, or any other ideas you might have. We also encourage sharing on the PHC (Poptropica Help Chat).

If you have an idea for a guest post, send it in to [email protected]! :)