Poptropica Citizens Need Your Help: New Nintendo DS Game (Review) #UbiPoptropica

Thank you to Ubisoft for sponsoring this post. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective. #UbiChamps

I’m always on the lookout for fun kid-friendly games, especially when we’re traveling. A new game always makes traveling less stressful for both mom and child. I was excited to test Ubisoft’s Poptropica for Nintendo DS (also compatible with the Nintendo 3DS system) . Sophia first heard about the Poptropica website from a classmate. She was only slightly familiar with the site, but was very excited to play the adventure game. Poptropica is rated E for Everyone
Sophia loves any game that allows her to customize her character. She went right to work creating her avatar, who also had the classic bubble eye head of all Poptropica characters. Her avatar was darn cute. Look at mini-Sophia. So cute!

A short tutorial at the beginning gives kids the lay of the land and gives players their mission: to bring new guests to a neglected museum by searching Poptropica’s island for artifacts. The first island we visited was Olympus, where we visited the temples of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. Part of the adventure is walking around each island and speaking with the different characters. Each character needs our help. Hermes couldn’t deliver this letters because he didn’t have his winged helmet while Artemis lost her golden arrows.

First of all, I love how cute the characters are in the world of Poptropica. There is no violence in this adventure game so I don’t have to worry about characters dying or any sort of gore. The game is very linear, so we have to follow the mission in exact order before we are given another mission. That was a little frustrating when we were stuck since we couldn’t try another mission until the previous was complete.

Sophia found the game too challenging for her. She’s somewhere in between beginner and intermediate gamer (not bad for the age of 7) and gave up playing fairly quickly. I think it was too much reading for her (speech bubbles popped up when you chat with the characters). Also, at the beginning, it’s a little unclear what the first mission is until we spoke to several characters. It was too involved for Sophia.

So I had my other big kid, aka hubby, try out Poptropica. Ok, I confess, we played it together while our kids were sleeping. We played for so long, the red battery light started to blink angrily at us. We quickly plugged it in so we wouldn’t lose our progress. There were arcade type mini-games along the way that would have definitely been too difficult for Sophia to pass. In fact, they were too difficult for my husband and I. I played one mini-game 5 or 6 times before I passed (but gosh darn it, I was going to pass it!).

I’m not sure what the Poptropica website is like, but now I want to try it out with Sophia. She’s definitely not ready to play the Nintendo DS version, but we’ll come back to it soon. I would fun playing the game with her.

Poptropica on Nintendo DS retails for $29.99.

I received a copy of the game for review. All opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links.