Popstorms, Realms, Web Development

Sandbox acquisition, animation confirmation, & more

Slanted Fish

Hey Poptropicans! As you may recall from recent news, Poptropica is no longer owned by Pearson, but for those of you with an even keener eye, you may notice the copyright adorning the bottom of the homepage now being accredited to Sandbox Networks.

sandbox poptropica

You can read more about the Sandbox acquisition in this article. Family Education Network, formerly a division of Pearson, was recently sold to this London, UK-based company, and along with it went Poptropica. Both the leaders of Sandbox and Poptropica seem positive about this change, so here’s hoping this’ll make Poptropica bigger and better in due time! 🙂

In fact, the article mentions a quote from Jeff Kinney revealing that “…we’ll be seeing the stories and characters from FEN brought to life on the big screen.” And this tweet from Poptropica confirms that they are indeed working on an animated show – the question now is “when?”

On a different note, here are a couple of Popstorm illustrations that have recently popped up:

Popstorm #28: Fish!
Popstorm #29: Parading Pigs

Also, Captain Crawfish has posted a new Remarkable Realms video on the official blog, which you can check out below. This one showcases a waterpark made by Fast Lizard – and better yet, a comment made by the Creators on the video assures us that we’ll soon get to share our Realms with each other: “by end of June, we hope to have function that allows users to share on their own”.

And, just in case you haven’t been keeping up with our Twitter timeline (either on the sidebar of the PHB or by following us), here are some tweeted tidbits that may be of interest:

  • Between the site and app, Poptropica gets about 4.5 million different users a month, playing from 100+ different countries. (see tweet)
  • Even Jeff Kinney hasn’t completed every Poptropica island. (see tweet)
  • Arabian Nights Ep. 3 is currently scheduled for late June. (see tweet)
  • The unnamed underground cave island (hinted at in past sneak peeks) has been an idea from the Creators for years, but the storyline is still uncertain. (see tweet)
  • There are plans to offer Poptropica in Spanish in late 2015 or early 2016. (see tweet)
  • There are 31 Creators at Poptropica offices. (see tweet)
  • Among the Poptropica Creators, there are two Jeffs, two Jennifers, and two Jons. (see tweet)

That’s all for this post, but be sure to catch up below for news on the Poptropica Hall of Fame, new Poptropica-comics-based games on the mobile app, and more. Stay popping, Poptropicans! 😉

Uncategorized

Poptropica Hall of Fame!

HPuterpop

Hi Gs,

Rawfish just announced that a new program is going to be available for the next few weeks: you can get your Poptropica character on a Poptropica island Main Street! The more island medallions, the more of a chance you get – so collect as many island completions as you can! There will be six avatars added to six different islands. Whether these will be old islands or new is unspecified.

HoF

Have you ever wanted your Poptropican to be featured on a Poptropica Island? Now’s your chance: introducing the Poptropica Hall of Fame!

We’re giving players the opportunity to have their avatar appear on Main Street on one of six Poptropica Islands. Simply play through any Island and earn that Island’s Medallion, and you’ll be entered to have your avatar chosen.

It’ll still count if you’ve completed the Island before, and there’s no limit to how many times you can replay. So the more Islands you complete, the more chances you have to be a star!

Each week, we’ll pick players at random from those who have earned Medallions. Those players will have their Poptropicans placed in one of six different quests. We’ll announce which players, and which Islands, after the first drawing.

This looks really exciting, and I’m looking forward to seeing who the first avatar will be!

Also, I see what he did with the “hot dog costume” comment – trying to draw attention away from his tasty crawfishyness. You’re not fooling anyone!

TAFN.

-HPuterpop

App

Escape from Monkeys and Balloons on mobile!

Slippery Raptor

Hey Poptropicans! SR here.

I have big news for you today!

Remember the Daily Pop sneak peeks we had back in December about PopComics Island? Well, it didn’t turned out to be an island but instead, it became a mini-game advertisement on the Poptropica app! When you land on “Home Island”, you can spot the first mini-game called “Poptastic“. You may notice the balloon animals from the island Jorge and Oliver visited in the comics!

The game is quite simple. You just have to tap to pop the balloon animals on your screen before they get too close. The game runs for just 30 seconds then the animals will start to show up.

Here’s a tip: the red ones are the fastest, next are the green ones, then the blue ones, the yellow balloons and the purple ones the slowest. The green frog balloons also move from right to left.

When you successfully pop all the balloon animals, you will get a Balloon Animal Follower! There’s also a challenge left for us: can you beat the high scores 650, 600 and 580? I’m very curious on how these people got their scores in just thirty seconds. 😛

Anyways, here are some of the shots I took in-game! (Try clicking on the image to enlarge it.)

The second mini-game is called “Escape from Monkey Island”. The game is on the map and it is downloadable.

When you enter the mini-game, you may find a familiar scene—the wormhole that sucked Oliver and Jorge to Poptropica. You will be greeted by the monkeys of Monkey Island, telling you to leave and Oliver agrees with it. Jorge disagrees because he lost his things in the wormhole. Now, it’s your job to help him find it!

The game only runs for two minutes and the items are scattered around the temple.
Here are the locations of the items: the cheesy balls are by the temple entrance, the pants are on the tree at the top of the temple, the malt balls are on the tree far left of the temple, the soda is on the top right tree by the hot air balloon and the inhaler is just next to the hot air balloon. Now, click on the balloon to escape the island.

You will now receive the Coconut Power, which shoots coconuts similar to the monkey in Reality TV Island.

Here are the in-game photos!

You can also watch the new PopComics trailer! It looks awesome.

Last but not the least, we want to encourage everyone to help out in doing the island pages on Poptropica Wiki. It would be a great help!

Speaking of Poptropica Comics, why don’t you read UiPE and HP’s review on MotM Island? Don’t worry, the guide will be up soon, they’re working on it. 🙂

What do you guys think? Leave a comment below!

-Slippery

Graphic Novels, Mystery of the Map Island, Popspiracy Theories, The Missing Link, Time Tangled Island

The Missing Link: Octavian’s secret

HPuterpop

Hi Gs,

So, you guys have faithfully been waiting for the next Missing Link about my giant Time Tangled theory – well, it looks like I was onto something.

If you guys have read any of the Mystery of the Map novel (which involves the origin of Poptropica), you may have realized that it basically debunked my theory – it looked like that time travel and inconsistencies have nothing to do with Poptropica’s wacky timeline. In fact, it didn’t look like there was much a timeline in the first place, what with the apparent viking island being a part of Poptropica as a whole, and not a teleported time period.

But just recently, I was looking through MotM at Octavian’s appearances, searching for an Easter egg. I found multiple Easter eggs throughout, not all about Octavian, and I’ll be posting more about those in the future, but for now, we’re talking about Octavian.

Two things to mention about the excerpts: first, Octavian saying “Because it is time.” If I have learned anything from the Flash on the CW, its to look out for double meanings in phrases. Time is mentioned indirectly multiple times throughout the book, not only by Octavian. So let’s think about the phrase as a double meaning; “Because it is time”. To preface, Mya shouts “Why are you doing this?!” while she hangs off of the balloon. So his motive for crashing the balloon is time. Now how does that fit in? Read more to find out!

Continue reading “The Missing Link: Octavian’s secret” →