I am speaking as someone who has been playing this game since 2008 when I was only 7 years old. Poptropica is a game that has a special place in my heart and I always look back on it fondly and enjoy any chance I get to replay it. It has changed a lot throughout the years. Some for the better, some for the worse. I remember being so excited whenever a new island would come out, or whenever I stopped playing it for a few years and came back to a barrage of new and exciting islands to explore. I remember checking out the blog page and watching the trailers for new islands as well as sneak peaks for what was to come. I even remember making a ton of alt poptropica accounts to replay the islands fresh and to have their own unique profile, closet, and appearance.

The shut down of flash is what really hurt this game the most as well as its large player base. I know many people, including myself, are begging for the old islands to come back. It irks me a bit whenever I see references to the old islands in the game, and even in the game trailer, and yet those islands are nowhere in sight unless you get flash point. It's been about 4 years since the shut down and I am still holding out hope that they will come back. I rationalize this by thinking that I imagine the transfer of code from flash to this other program isn't as easy as a copy and paste, and that sound affects and soundtracks for each island and each location need to be created, and something like that can't be done in one day. Either way, I do have hopes that this Steam version of Poptropica will bless us with that update one day. Until then, I'll be playing on the Steam version as well as the web version, but in all honesty I do prefer the Steam version more.

For the steam version, I'm grateful they kept the classical home island. Not the og one, but the somewhat newly updated one. I am a bit bummed that the original tutorial island "Money Wrench" isn't there anymore as I feel like it was a great introduction of the game. Teaching users how to use the mechanics and show them the world of Poptropica: A place where every island has their own story and their own issues that need solving. Not sure why that was removed, but I assume there was a valid reason to it. I am also a bit bummed that your character dose not have a profile, let alone one you can customize. I know there use to be one for flash, and even for the updated version, but I wish they brought that back. I like how you can share your closet with your friends, or show off how many islands you completed, or those fun trivia questions you could answer and what poptropica Olympic team you were and so on. I remember I would always lie about my character's country of origin and say I'm from somewhere like Canada or France with my alt accounts, giving them more personality. Even with the updated version I did like the customization of it, but I just hated that it was hidden behind a paywall.

Game play wise, it's not that bad, although it can be very easy to just phase through the walls in some places and get yourself stuck. My biggest gripe is the size of the screen when playing. There seems to be no way of full screening it, so it's very easy to accidentally click out of the game while playing, and possibly opening another game or application depending on where your mouse lands on. I also like how you can log into your game without having to retype your password over and over again if you wanted to play. One issue I have is the shops. I don't know how often the shops get updated in the steam version unlike the web version, but there is a lack of variety. I would assume they'd update the shops ever month or so, especially in line with the seasons like they use to, but I got this game as a Christmas gift and I didn't see any of that.