Happy Lunar New Year, Poptropicans! ๐งง๐๐ฒ ๆญๅ็ผ่ฒก!
Starting today, we’re ushering in the Year of the Rat, one of the twelve animals in the calendar cycle of the Chinese zodiac. ๐
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. โ๏ธ
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! โจ
Hello, everybody, it’s Lucky Joker here! Today I’ll be guiding you through yet another advertisement that can be found on Home Island.
The featured ad this time around promotes the newly released Disney Channel comedy horror series, The Owl House โ which is about a teenage girl who stumbles into a fantasy world and pursues her dream of becoming a witch. I’ve heard the reviews are great, so you might want to check it out. I think I’ll give it a whirl myself!
Okay, anyway, head inside and talk to Eda. She’ll give you her staff, and you’ll be redirected to the mini game. You needn’t worry, it’s pretty easy.
The mission is to save King. To do that, owl you got to do is move your mouse from left to right, dodging the dive bombing demon attacks without losing all your lives. You have 5 of them, so be careful!
Once you manage to successfully keep King from being stolen, you’ll receive your very own King Friend Follower and Flying Staff. Yes, you can actually fly on it! Pretty neat, huh?
Well folks, that’s all for today. Don’t forget to tune in to new episodes of The Owl House every Friday on Disney Channel and to check up on the PHB for fun posts coming soon.
As always, thank you for reading and I’ll talk to you in the next one. Pop on!
Hello, everybody! Gentle Dolphin here with news of recent Pop updates!
It may be the middle of the month, but we still want to highlight the January member gifts! This month, members are gifted six exclusive items: two outfits (Stylin’ Oufit and Cool Outfit), two pet accessories (Bling Glasses and Bling Collar), and two furniture items for your clubhouse (Cinema Lightbox and Classic Record Player).
*Special thanks to Osmium for providing the clubhouse picture!*
This is definitely a cool member pack, but there are a couple small things I want to address. First, the Stylin’ Outfit looks incredibly similar to an outfit from Poptropica Worlds. I mean, just look at these two photos and try to tell me they’re not the same:
Second, the Pet Barn has been updated to include the Bling Glasses and Collar. Strange that two exclusive items are being sold in an in-game store, made even more so by the fact that they are marked members-only in said store.
Along with new member gifts, January also brought aย store update! Like last month, the January update features many older items and costumes. That’s cool and all, but 11 of the 34 items are for members only.
What’s also unfortunate is that the prices of these items have gone up and I mean WAY UP! While most of the items are within the normal 250-350 credit range, a few of them are now worth up to 500 CREDITS!!! Yikes! Your dreams of owning that Mini Dr. Hare follower may seem impossible, but don’t give up hope! Speaking of dreams…
In case you missed it, January 13 was National Make Your Dreams Come True Day. Poptropica celebrated by sharing words of encouragement on social media along with an inspiring illustration from Blue Tooth.
You heard right!! Here’s a word of encouragement from the Poptropica Creators to you! No matter what it is that makes you happy, big or small, chase it until it’s yours!
Work hard! Take breaks! Learn from your mistakes! Be patient with yourself! Most of all, stay hydrated! Very important. WE’RE ROOTING FOR YOU!!
On the Instagram version of the post, several people have commented some dreams that they want to come true. One dream that a lot of people mentioned and agreed with was to bring back all of the old islands. Hopefully, that wish will come true soon…
If you’ve been here a while, you may recall when Poptropica ran a contest called #MyPoptropicaCostume back in 2016โ17, 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 โ 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 โ Creepy Peanut and Speedy Toes โ 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.
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!
Hey, Poptropicansโwelcome 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 2007โ2013, 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 glitcheridk. 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.”
We love those islands too, but need to update the technology. They were made in Action Script 2 and were causing a lot of problems for players. We're hoping to bring them back once the game is no longer in flash!
On the first day of the new year, Poptropica posted the following on Instagram: “2020 is going to great [sic] โ 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 returnโbut 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 theOld Island Directory, you can also relive their memories with the PHB’s collection of Island Guides.
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. ๐ข
And yet, Flash is going away simply because tech has evolved for the betterโmodern 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 changesโand yes, even the seemingly odd creation of Poptropica Worlds, built with Unity and launched in 2017.
We're working on making sure that Poptropica stays around long past 2020! The amazing Poptropica creators are hard at work on new updates to the technology and the game for all our loyal fans! #PoptropicaForever
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 technologyโsuch 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 backโwith 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.
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