Hey Poptropicans, how’s it hanging? With Poptropica’s post-Flash developments, things have been changing on Haxe, but if you’re not a new player, you might not have noticed because they’re designed for newbies. And if you are a new player, well, you might not be aware of what’s different!
At least one eagle-eyed player, though, has been keeping track: PHB reader Perfect Fish reported some developments seen in Poptropica’s Haxe build over the past week. Last Monday, for example, new players would get a tutorial pop-up screen explaining the basics of the game’s mechanics:
That’s now gone, though, along with this character naming screenwe’ve seen before in Flash (albeit in different colors) and more recently in Haxe. Perfect Fish says he was able to keep his customized pre-scripted name (“Lucky Jumper”) on Haxe in this short-lived experiment that could’ve freed us from the names assigned to pre-made characters. Will it ever return?
While the naming option didn’t stay long — perhaps the Creators are still fine-tuning it? — the second step of character customization does remain, and new players can find it by talking to Amelia (that’s the girl by the blimp) on Home Island and saying, “Customize how I look!”
By the way, notice that new pop-up in the lower right corner nudging you to create an account? Looks like the Creators are putting a lot of energy into showing the ropes to new players.
Anyway, after you choose that customization option with Amelia—and remember, it only shows up for newbies—you’ll be greeted with this “Choose Your Style” screen. We’ve seen this appearance editor screen before too, back in 2019, although it used to show up before you even made it to Home Island.
With all these subtle changes on Haxe, it seems the Creators are still trying to figure out the best way forward when it comes to the new player’s experience on this new platform, and it’s possible different features will keep moving around as the Creators keep experimenting.
What suggestions do you have for the future of character customization and newbie tutorials? Leave them in the comments below — maybe they’ll inspire the Poptropica Creators!
Hey, Poptropicans! From the (temporary) return of classic islands (!!) to hot new summer items, there’s a lot to cover in this post. Let’s get started.
Players have been requesting the return of the classic, old school islandssince they vanished from the map last July. Although there’s a backdoor way to access them, the popular demand ever since their disappearance has always been to officially reinstate them into the game itself. And now, they’re back!
Four monochromatic, nostalgic pages of glorious classic islands await.
…But as you can see, there is one major catch: it’s for members only. (Non-members, fear not: we’ll get to how you can join in on the fun, too.)
If you are a member, though, you’ll get a screen inviting you into Early Poptropica Island. Clicking “Play” will redirect you to the old Flash login page, where you’ll need to enter your login again to be brought to Early Pop.
From there, you can hop onto the blimp to travel across the various classic islands, as pictured earlier in this post. (And if you need them, we’ve still got guides for every island.) Keep in mind, however, that since this is old technology (Action Script 2), these islands can sometimes be buggy.
Why members only? Reddit user theodoor03 reached out to Poptropica support to ask this question, and shared the following response he received: in short, “Because of the islands’ age, they require a good deal of extra maintenance per player. [Poptropica] simply would not be able to support every player trying to access them right now.”
If you’re a non-member, don’t worry. You can still play the classic islands with the aforementioned backdoor method, which is to use idk’s Old Island Directory (also listed on our Glitching page). There are just a few more steps you’ll have to follow compared with before Poptropica’s members-only update, which are all outlined in the notes of the teleporter tool.
Happy exploring—while you can! Since Flash will be gone at the end of 2020, there’s only about half a year left before these islands are no longer playable, membership or not. Make the most of this moment!
Some players have reported seeing a new cinematic trailer video for Poptropica when logging into the Haxe build. The 30-second clip animates a sea of familiar islands, from iconic ones like Mythology and Arabian Nights (where Scheherezade is summoning… herself?) to classic ones like Twisted Thicket and Zomberry Island. You can watch the epic video here.
Could this be reassurance that some of these older islands will return in the future after Flash? (Hopefully for all players, too.)
Another week, another store update! Here’s what’s in on the first week of June. In total, we have 21 items in stock, 9 of which are for members only. Most notably, the Graduate costume is free for all! (And while you’re flapping about in these robes, take a moment to read the PHB’s 2020 commencement address as a note of encouragement for all Poptropicans!)
This week’s costumes are: Graduate, Spring Fling, Unicorn Girl*, Clover Kid, Lilac Star, Hiker Cutie*, and Wild Child*. (Lilac Star and Clover Kid are relatively cheap at 75 credits.) For followers, we have the Deer*, Chick, F.R.E.D. (from Galactic Hot Dogs), and Classic Pack*. Just two powers this week: Snow Fall and Flower Planting*. In pranks, there’s Hypno-Powder*, Silly Streams, Squirrel Prank*, and Bunny Wand. Finally, in miscellaneous: Marshmallow Roaster, Hiking Shoes, Classic PopGum*, and Balloons. (* = members only)
According to the Home Island billboard, store items will continue to rotate weekly, just as they have for the past couple of months. Huzzah!
And finally — it’s not only a new week but a new month, which means member gifts! June kicks off summer in the northern hemisphere, so the three flavors of Popsicles are quite fitting here. Members can also throw it back to 2015 with the Hover Scooter and Drone Flying Follower.
Like its real-life counterpart, the Hover Scooter (also known as a hoverboard) doesn’t actually hover, but simply glides, as shown in the gif below. Your Poptropican also suddenly puts on shoes to ride it.
The Hover Scooter and other June member gifts in action.
That’s it for this post! Share your thoughts in the comments—what islands do you want to see return in post-Flash Poptropica? what stands out to you in the new cinematic trailer? why is Poptropica bringing back a dead trend?—and we’ll see you next time. Stay safe, Poptropicans. ✊
Gentle Dolphin contributed reporting to this post. Thanks also to Purple Claw (former PHB staff) for tipping us off on several news items.
Hey Poptropicans, have we got a lot to look at this time!
In addition to the monthly rotation of store items, four new shops have popped up around Poptropica, each with their own themed items. Plus, the game’s showing signs of progress on the friends feature, and for the first time in a long time, we even get to see some official concept art. Let’s explore!
First, let’s take a tour of the new shops, which are all located in various common rooms on different islands. These common room stores feature themed items for those islands—some new, some we’ve seen before. However, these stores are only available in Poptropica’s Haxe Javascript build, and are unlikely to be made for Flash, which will soon be obsolete.
These common room stores are available on four islands so far: 24 Carrot, PoptropiCon: Episode 1, Survival: Episode 1, and Timmy Failure.
Our first stop is the cinema on 24 Carrot Island. You will find Quippy hovering by the entrance. They’re offering Dr. Hare-themed goodies for sale: Hare Hotshot (which was the former BETA Carrotene bonus for members who helped beta-test the sound-updated 24 Carrot Island), Dr. Hare Plush Toy, Light & Shadow Hare*, and the Rabbit Ear Prank*. (* = members only)
While waiting in line to get into PoptropiCon (Episode 1), you can stop by the Facili-Tee store to buy cool costumes such as the Tinfoil Robot and the Supernova (basically recolored from a Tron ad). You can also show your love of Old School Islands by wearing the Lunar Colony Cosplay* and Game Show Cosplay*. Quippy is ready for the convention with their own adorable cardboard cosplay!
While traveling in our blimp, we get caught in a storm and become stranded in the snowy forest of Survival Island(Episode 1). Thankfully, we’re not alone. A wooden Quippy can be found at the frozen pond under the big tree to the right. They’ll offer feathery friends like the Blue Woodpecker follower and the Owl Head Rider, as well as a Ghillie Suit* and a Frozen Body power*.
Our final stop is Timmy Failure Island. The bad news is that Timmy Failure Island is only available to members. The worse news is that you need to have a membership on an account in Haxe Javascript, as Flash-made accounts are separate from ones made in the newer Haxe build.
If you have an active membership on a Haxe Javascript account, you can access the island and its common room. Though Quippy looks as if they came out of a garbage truck, the store items are anything but trash. We have a Total costume, a Señor Burrito follower, Timmy’s iconic red Scarf*, and a mighty “GREATNESS” banner*. (Strange to list some items as for non-members when the whole island and its store are for members only!)
You can do more than shop in common rooms, of course. The Creators are hard at work implementing the friends feature to the new Poptropica, and new Haxe players now have a fourth dialogue with Amelia when they first land on Home Island: to meet new friends!
In common rooms such as the Blast-off Arcade, you can befriend other players by selecting “Want to be friends?” from the chat menu. If they say yes, you’ll even get a pop-up message saying the friend was added successfully! (It might also say the user isn’t registered, if that’s the case.)
Despite this, the player profile and friends page aren’t ready just yet, so there’s no way to view your friends on Haxe at the moment. But the signs are there that this popular feature is being worked on!
Over on the Creators’ Blog, the Creators shared an inside look on how they created the adorable Quippy. Early concepts show the artists figuring out how to show players the common room stores — did they want a droid, a kiosk, or something else? Once they settled on a droid, they chose some of their favorite designs and explored them further…
All this hard work and creativity culminated into one of the most unique and adorable faces in Poptropica. A friendly droid equipped with a luminous smile and a keen fashion sense. The magnificent Quippy.
The Creators ended their post with a word of encouragement for budding artists and avid gamers:
If you love games and art, consider learning more about becoming a games artist! There are a lot of ways to get involved in the making of video games outside of coding, and game artists are a critical piece of the team. After all, what’s a game without the art!?
That wraps up this post! What do you think of Quippy and the presence of all these new stores? Thoughts on Poptropica’s Haxe build so far? Share in the comments, and if you haven’t yet, catch up to our other posts below!
Hey Poptropicans! Store items for the month of May are here, and unlike last month, there’s no sign that they’ll change weekly this time.
The items are all ones we’ve seen before in Poptropica, though their availability on the Haxe Javascript build is a good sign of the Creators’ progress in porting over some of the older items to the game’s future.
For this month, the store costumes are: Soccer Player (boy and girl), Rainbow Storm, Rebel Beach, Mythology Surfer (boy and girl), Pop Star, and Rock Star. Miscellaneous brings us the Cinnamon Fire PopGum and Balloons, and in pranks we have Sticky Notes, Fart Gun, and the 8-Bit Birthday Pixel Pig Power.
As for the real powers, there’s Binary Rain, Bobblehead, Flower Planting Power, and Atom Power. Finally, in followers, we have the adorable Chick, Classic Pack, Charlie the Chocomonkey, and Atlantis Drone.
You’ll see the first change right when you start the island, which now plays a short video showing a kid pulling carrots and getting whisked underground by a mechanical claw that drags him into the carrot factory, where Dr. Hare awaits. You can see this teaser video in our previous post.
The next change is a nostalgic one: you can mix a drink at the Carrot King Diner to change your hair color! This hidden trick was in the original 24 Carrot that released in 2008, but had disappeared when 24 Carrot was re-released in 2013 as a sound-updated island. Seven years later, it’s back!
Characters on this island also now come with small speech bubbles with just an ellipsis (the three dots) to indicate they have something to say. Perhaps this will extend to other islands in Haxe?
Speaking of, well, speaking, some of the dialogue on this flagship Poptropica island has been altered. Overall, the new lines flow well and give the player a better sense of what’s going on. Even the homeless man gets to explain his circumstances: the closure of the carrot cake factory has put him out of work.
And, at least one store in Poptropica still has toilet paper. 😉
Anyway, that’s all for this post, but these aren’t the only updates from Poptropica this week! Stay tuned for our next post, where we’ll talk more on the new common room stores and the funky little droid powering them…
Surf’s up, Poptropicans! Catch the waves and ride on over to the latest island to surface in the Poptropica seas… American Girl: Joss’s Island.
Yup, as you can probably guess, this isn’t your typical island with a quest—instead, it’s Poptropica’s most extra ad yet, here to promote “American Girl” dolls, and specifically its “Girl of the Year 2020”: Joss Kendrick, surfer.
It’s not the first time Poptropica has built an island solely for advertising—the same tactic was applied with LEGO Island in 2018. Anyway, there’s quite a bit to do on Joss’s Island, which you can find on both mobile and desktop, including HAXE! (Thanks for the tip, Perfect Fish.)
Upon arriving, you’ll hear a jaunty, upbeat tune playing—and there’s more sound to come. But first, a quick overview: you can talk to the doll characters to see what’s going on, like the fact that you can click on interactive objects around the island. There are four buildings you can enter (from left to right): the cinema, Shine Athletics Gym, American Girl Place, and SoCal Board Shop. And if you head left, you’ll see a sign that tells you you’re in Huntington Beach (which is a real city in California!).
As Joss herself will tell you, there are four free prizes to be had on this island. You can pick up a Shine Bright Shirt by the entrance of American Girl Place, a Cheer Competition Jacket above the RV by the SoCal Board Shop, your very own Joss’s Tassel Bag to the left of your parked blimp, and a Catch a Wave Hoodie above the cinema. As usual, members get to keep ad prizes forever!
Inside the SoCal Board Shop, you can play a surfing game with mechanics similar to the cheetah run on Reality TV: Wild Safari. By clicking multiple times, you can jump higher as you ride the waves. However, in both my and Perfect Fish’s experience, it seems there are some invisible obstacles in the game causing it to be hard to win. Still, if you manage to beat it, you’ll win Joss’s Surfboard(thanks, Scrooge200!).
Moving on, there’s the American Girl Place, which is basically one fancy building to promote various parts of the American Girl franchise. If you head to the right, you’ll find a little restaurant with a video you can watch.
Next up is the Shine Athletics Gym, where you can play a Rock Band-like beats game where the goal is to lead a cheer squad by pressing buttons as they come along each of the three colored stripes. If your volume is up, you’ll hear the song “Go Joss” as you jam along. If you do well enough, you’ll win an adorable little Seal Pup that can go on your head!
Finally, there’s the cinema, which is of course playing all things Joss. You can watch eight videos in there: two are music videos, “Go Joss” (the soundtrack to the aforementioned beats game) and “Surf’s Up”; there’s also a doll stop-motion animated series of Joss’s story in six episodes.
That’s all for American Girl: Joss’s Island! What did you think of this most ambitious ad in the history of Poptropica? Did you momentarily get your hopes up about a new island on the map? Will you wear the new prizes? Don’t you think Poptropica should make the Seal Pup the next pet? Comment below!
As we wrap up the month of April, we come into our final week of the weekly store updates. While the costumes have switched around this week, they’re ones we’ve seen throughout this month, so nothing new.
Will we see the weekly updates to the store continue in May? Time will soon tell, as the next month fast approaches…
Last but not least, the Poptropica.com homepage got a little update! We’ve mentioned the new “Pick a Character” screen, but now, when you scroll down below that, you’ll find three square images highlighting Poptropica’s features: Connect with friends! Play epic adventures! Adopt your own pets!
So, although friends in Poptropica has been a little lacking after the post-Flash update, and has yet to appear in HAXE, perhaps this is a reassurance that friends will continue to be a priority for Poptropica’s future.
On another note, if you look at the links below those pictures, you’ll find one that wasn’t there before: Do Not Sell My Info (for CA Residents). That’s CA for California, not Canada, by the way. Apparently, residents of California can request to opt out of having their details shared with the third-party partners of Sandbox Network Inc, Poptropica’s parent company.
Of course, they will “need to verify your identity to process your request.”
As for the rest of us, um, Poptropica’s been selling our data…??? In their words: “Sandbox Networks Inc. (“SNI”) does share customer information with carefully selected third parties in order to create a superior customer experience and for permitted business purposes.”
It’s not clear what “customer information” entails here, but Poptropica doesn’t collect much personal info to begin with, so it’s probably nothing to worry about. (And to be fair, many other websites are already involved in legal data selling.) What we do know is that when creating a Poptropica account, you’re asked for your age (although this may be disappearing with the new HAXE setup), a username and password to log in with, and you can also connect an email account to your Poptropica account later on. Plus, the aforementioned “carefully selected third parties” are likely advertisers like American Girl, who want to know who they’re advertising to — which is fair enough.
Now that you’ve made it this far into the post, I hope that long title at the beginning finally makes sense. 🙂
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