🦄 Ponytropica 🦄

Hello, everyone!

Lucky Joker here and today I’ll be sharing, from the Creator’s Blog, some fantastic sketches from one of February’s Islands of The Month, Reality TV Island. Some of these concepts never made it into the game, so it’s pretty cool to see what the Creators had originally planned out for us!

In the rough sketches below, which you can click to enlarge the view, we see ideas for different challenges which seem to be more complex and difficult than the ones from the island. This includes game ideas called Rope Vine Races, Grab the Crab, Cage the Croc, Coconut Tree Shake, as well as a race through some islands that preceded RTV, like Early Pop and Shark Tooth.

There’s also a more refined schematic that explains to us what I’m assuming to be the directions and tips for completing the island, though they never appeared in-game. More game ideas are presented: Sharpening Stone, Build Your Own Fort, Forage for Food, and Dangerous Rock Climb.

In this lovely collage of sketches, there are many different character designs, some of which we see on the reality TV show and some that didn’t make it. A handful of these characters still have the same gimmick but were redesigned, while others were replaced with already existing villains and characters from previous islands. It also looks as if these characters didn’t have names at this stage in development.

Alright, let’s evaluate these characters more thoroughly, shall we?

In the first group (left), we have the Athlete (who became Slim Slam in the game), the Music Lover (Rickie Rock), the Fast Food Help (Freddy Fry), the Grandma (Grandma Gracey), the Biker Gang Dude (Richie Rebel), the Farmer (who might’ve been replaced with the cowgirl, Lassie Lasso), the Artist, the Cheerleader, and the Old Man (Grandpa Grum).

In the second group (middle), there’s the Hip Hop Guy (Hip Hop), the Hiker (Helen Hiker), the Golfer, the Store Clerk, the Magician (Magic Mervin), the Cat Lady, and Popsicle Boy.

Finally, in the third group (right), we have the New Age Hippie (Hippie Harry), the Lawyer Type (Busy Bob), the Librarian (Possibly Cathy Codex), the Rich Guy, the Snooty Girl with Small Dog (Sarah Snooty), the Angry Chef (Chef Jeff, except he’s less angry in the final version), the Cool Tech Nerd, the Goth Girl (Sickly Skull), and the Aerobics Instructor (perhaps what became Sally Score).

The Creators also had some more refined images of various natural settings that didn’t make it into the final game, which you can check out below:

The Beach Cliffs show several large rocks on a beach shore with birds and their nests perched on top of them, giving us the full scale of a smaller sneak peek from back in 2009.

The Obstacle Course is a bamboo contraption that contains various sections to get past: tilting platforms, jungle bounce trampoline, collapsible doors, swinging hammers of wood, fruit fumble (probably slippery to walk on), rope climb, and finally, a parachute drop. Many of these mechanisms have appeared in other forms on other islands.

Finally, there is the Base Camp and its Caverns, not to be confused with the rumored Crisis Caverns Island. The objective here is uncertain – perhaps some kind of maze game or a place for a hidden item? Interesting nonetheless!

Which ones do you wish they had made a reality? Share your thoughts on these behind-the-scenes peeks in the comments below!

Thanks for reading, I’ll talk to you soon. Pop on!

-Lucky Joker