Hey Poptropicans, big Pop drop this weekend: a remastered version of Mythology Island is now on Haxe for all players (not just members)!
The new version has some differences compared with the classic—we’ll get into more details below—but for now, if you need a refresher, our old Mythology Island Guide can still help you through the puzzles!
If your account isn’t on Haxe, you can use idk’s Format Loader and select “HTML5 (Haxe JS)” to switch over, or you can simply make a new account on Poptropica to play on Haxe. If you’re confused about it, read here about the differences between Flash and Haxe.
The key differences with the new Mythology are that it’s been made easier, with various challenges from the old version removed, and some dialogue altered to nudge players on what to do. Since there have been some drastic changes, the PHB plans to release a separate guide for the new Mythology Island — so stay tuned for that!
For the curious, here are the major changes (spoilers ahead):
- The Museum of Olympus is optional (the room with the statues of Greek deities).
- Main Street and the base of the Tree of Immortality are combined into one scene.
- Hercules is away on a lunch break, and a queue has formed outside Herc’s Hero Hut, which is no longer a space we can enter at any point in the island.
- The reed pipe is given to you at the Grove of Temples (outside a facade of Apollo’s temple, which can’t be entered), and so is the pipe tune, without having to first master the tune.
- For cleaning Hades’ temple, the boy gives you the starfish (used for Poseidon’s temple offering) instead of the now-removed drachma.
- The beach is gone, and with it, Aphrodite’s hangman challenge of Greek deity names. Instead, she’ll be in front of the common room, Midas’ Gym, ready to give you her teleportation mirror.
- The entrance to the Minotaur’s maze is already open — no reed pipe puzzle here. The snake challenge comes first, not last. And there’s no magical thread for the maze.
- The mini-game to cross the River Styx in the underworld? Gone.
- Aeolus’ wind boost is free — no drachmas here!
Even with many elements removed from the original, and changes that aren’t quite additions, the new Mythology can still be considered a full island much more than Reality TV: Wild Safari was, and took me at least an hour to complete (though part of that can be attributed to some lag I encountered while playing).
However, initial feedback from the Poptropica community has not been positive. Players have been sharing on spaces like the PHC Discord that the changes to the classic island feel like a dumbing down that offers no challenge, which might be okay for younger players, except that fandom activity seems to indicate that there aren’t so many children playing the game anymore as there are teens and older.
Here’s one video from Isaac of the Dimension Bros voicing out such a perspective, lamenting that the remake feels spoon-fed and doesn’t take the opportunity to add new challenges (skip to 2:48 to get to Mythology commentary). He mentions full screen ads ruining the experience, although other players have reported not seeing ads.
And here’s another one with similar concerns from Jia (Magniventris), also an older player who has loved the game since childhood and has stuck around for the nostalgia:
Whatever you make of the new version, though, the Creators’ Blog assures that these changes were made with player feedback in mind. Here’s what they said:
We collected feedback from players and looked closely at the island data to see what players loved and didn’t love about the original Mythology Island that came out in 2010. The Pop Creators then revised some of the gameplay and scripts to make it more fun!
Have you played the remastered Mythology Island on Haxe yet? What did you think of the changes? Or if it’s your first time playing Mythology, what are your impressions? Let us know in the comments below and on our PHC Discord server! ⚡️💪
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