Hello everyone! I’m back at it again with another blog post! We’re going to take it back a little. Back to the elementary/ middle school days were playing this game was actually cool. What is the game I am speaking of? Well, The game is Poptropica! (if you didn’t already see it in the photo above)

I remember the first time I played the game was back in elementary school. I was in the media center using the computers and our teacher told us about this website to help practice our math skills. From that website, I had found the holy grail for 9 year old me. The website was the one and only Poptropica. Best part about this game was it technically was a game where you can learn, so the horrid school wifi did not put a block on it.

Enough with the backstory of how I came across the game, let’s get into what the game really is.

As any online game, you have to create a character. Now, these characters you don’t have too much control over what exactly it will look like at first. They randomly generate the name you will go by and you can click through all the options there are to choose what your character will look.  

Here’s what the process sort of looks like

all pictures are screenshots I've taken myself in-game.

Once you’ve gone through the steps of creating your character you can finally go in and play the game. The first portion of the game is a bit of a tutorial of how to play. In this tutorial it will ask you if you want to save your game (which is a really good idea if you want to keep and progress you make... just saying.) You just have to make a username and password and that's about it. Once you make your login you can go back to the tutorial and figure out the game. I think the tutorial is pretty self explanatory… it pretty much teaches you how you move around and all that. Once you play the game you will really understand...

Unless you’re like me and just skip through the tutorial, because who needs that am I right?  The controls to the game are quite simple. You pretty much just use your mouse to click and move the character. There’s an arrow that points in the direction you wish to go which really makes it easy. To play this game all you need is a computer and a mouse or a trackpad. You don't really even need a keyboard unless you actually want to log in to save progress...

Anyways, the game is sort of a hub for a bunch of different other games I suppose. Once you start you will be sent to this map in which shows all these different islands you can go to. Each page of the map is pretty much split up by difficulty. (although, this is a kids game, so if you’re older a majority of the islands will most likely be really easy.)

Here’s what the map sort of looks like.

All the islands have a different objective, but once you complete the objective you get a medal for completing the island. To complete these islands there’s really a lot of problem-solving involved along with catching small things NPCs (nonplayer characters) say. They give off hints to what you will have to do next, and they also give you items to use to help in your journey of finishing the island. These NPC’s are really a key to being able to complete the islands as you are usually helping them with some sort of random problem they have.

Within the islands there's also a bunch of side quests and mini games just to make the game have a bit more substance to it. It's almost like a filler in a TV show. It's not really needed for the plot, but it makes the series go on for longer. In this case, it makes the island itself last longer.

That’s pretty much the basics of the game, now there are little extras to the game which make it a little more fun! There are costumes and such you can buy in the shop which you can then wear while in game. They don’t really interfere with gameplay, but some of the items look cool. 9 year old me was absolutely obsessed with the costumes. My account had nearly all of them at one point it was honestly insane.

A few of the costumes:

**WARNING IF YOU HAVE A FEAR OF PIRATES, BURGERS, OR CLOWNS SCROLL AWAY**

Looking back at it now, I definitely see why this was my go-to game. It’s really a good game for younger people as it’s for the most part really easy. Nowadays I prefer more of a challenge. For anyone looking for an easy problem-solving game or just anyone looking for a child-friendly game, this is definitely a great game to play. Even if you just want to throw it back a little and see how much this game has changed over the years I definitely recommend taking some time to check this good old game out.