What happened to you Poptropica, you used to be good back then...
Genre(s):
Adventure
Platform(s):
Adobe Flash Microsoft Windows iOS Android
Release:
September 2007
Developer(s):
Pearson Education, Inc.
Publisher(s):
Pearson Education, Inc.
Poptropica is an online role-playing game, developed in 2007 by Pearson Education's Family Education Network, and targeted towards children aged 6 to 15. The game used to be good back in 2007 - 2018, but overtime the game had bad updates. And it resulted in the downfall of the game.
Why It Popped Now
When the game was transferred over to HTML5, a lot of the features were removed or terribly downgraded in a way that the feature is now useless.
Many of the islands were removed in the HTML5 version, downgrading the number of islands to just 10 Islands, the Realms Island was also removed despite it being a good island to create things with.
The store was revamped to a actual store, while it does look good. Many of the items in there are very lacking and many of them are for members only.
The new friends list was a poorly done downgrade of the original friends list, in which it removed the team clubhouses, questions you can add to your profile, and you cannot customize other player's outfits anymore.
The clothing icon, will now only allow you to customize your own character. Meaning you cannot copy outfits from NPC characters anymore, but at least you can use outfits that you made before the HTML5 update that contain very old sponsorship items.
The game is very poorly optimized, as it can crash at times. And it plays in a low framerate.
In 2022, they ended up putting their game on Steam, but for some reason you have to pay $20 for it. And they put the old islands on the Steam version, meaning you have to pay them money for islands that were originally for free.
In fact it was discovered that the paid version is just the Flash Version of the game with no membership system, which has the infamous infinite credits glitch from the wheel.
In 2024, the developers abandoned their original website in favor of Cool Math Games, and there is no membership anymore. While good for the players, is a rather medÃocre business decision considering they would need to have money to stay upfloat, especially for hosting the game.
Some of the islands are very short, as some can be beaten under a hour.
Redeeming Qualities
The soundtrack is pretty good.
The game used to be good back in 2007-2018, in which had 47 islands, and it allowed you to view your completed islands at any time.
The sponsorship/advert items can be kept in the HTML5 version, unlike the Flash Version of the game in which takes them away from you after the sponsorship disappears.
