Island Discussion #28: New Dimension

Hello everyone!

We have reached the end of May which – importantly – only means one thing; we are slowly creeping towards a finished project that yet remains “super secret” to us. Project: Super Secret can be a lot of things that we possibly couldn’t even imagine. Even though it has been through a few years of production and will continue to do so for the rest of this year (possibly) this project still lives up to its name and I applaud Club Penguin for that. On the other hand, it makes it so much harder for us to assume what it could be and the hype may end up driving us completely insane – if it hasn’t done so already!

To be fair, we have received several sneak peeks since last year and they are becoming more frequent and expected. By the end of each month, the team will continue to give us a sneak peek into what they are creating until they finally announce it. Now, from what we have seen, the project seems to have a lot of depth and by that I mean a variety of aspects that could push the boundaries and turn Club Penguin into something totally new! Maybe it is a good thing? Possibly not? Well, I think it is about time Club Penguin takes a new step since they have succeeded for a noticeable amount of years as an Adobe Flash based game. However the last couple of years haven’t been so good and that is not because the team are becoming lazy. It is quite the opposite, in fact! They have been working on this super secret project for a while now and we are soon from witnessing the final outcome, possibly by the end of this year.

So in this post today, I feel would be useful to recap everything we know about the project but what I am really interested in is how we get there. Not just from one game to another, but also from Club Penguin (2D) to Club Penguin (3D). It highlights a huge leap so it would be fair to say that some people will be blown away by this game. But because of how different it is, will this make the acceleration from one game to another unrealistic? It depends how creative the team are. But I am going to be talking about this later because, right now, I need to recapitulate what we know about Project: Super Secret – currently. We are going chronological so back we go to June/July 2015 when we received our first sneak peek.

Remember when Riyita (owner of Club Penguin Space) visited the Club Penguin Offices in Kelowna last year? It must have been a pretty amazing opportunity that I would snatch up any time, if I could. Anyway, Riyita was lucky enough the test out a “small” sample of Project: Super Secret. This was the Clothing Customizer. So after he had left Kelowna and was able to manage his blog once again, Riyita was given permission to show what he had made – with the Clothing Customizer – to the rest of the Club Penguin Community and (believe me) we were drowned with hype! This was the first time we managed to have a look at a physical representation of Project: Super Secret so you can imagine how surprised and thrilled we were.

A few days later (early July) Club Penguin officially confirmed this sneak peek and showed off a little video of what the early Clothing Customizer looked like at the time. Since it was a year ago, development of the app was obviously not final so what you see in the video may not appear in the official product. Below I have left an image of a fully customizable hoodie that featured in the video. If you want to see the video, click here. You can also check out Riyita’s small sneak peek right here! 

Island Discussion #19: August

Hey everyone!

In today’s Island Discussion, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about what we can expect this August seeing that we have only just started the month and it does seem to be an interesting one from what I have gathered so far. Megg – Community Manager of Club Penguin – has been experimenting with a few ways to reveal what players can expect with a particular month. In June, it started off with a calendar which was very revealing but many players wanted one of these every month. I felt that these weren’t the best technique so Megg tried something different in July: A few images, words and phrases. Funny enough, not even all of the listed things to look forward to happened so July was only well known for the Inside Out Party and the first #ProectSuperSecret sneak peek. For August, Megg decided to create anagrams of each phrase for a twist. In some ways, I respect this idea more than the others since it gives player a challenge to be able to find out what to expect and several of them were quite hard to solve. However with the on-going support from the community, we managed to find them out quite quickly! If you are not looking for spoilers on what to expect this August, then I am afraid that this post is not for you. Sorry!

1. idd uoy nitoec?!

2. nsfhiao ecaf off (senak epek)

3. nfiipdeshr day

4. epluff rhladne emte-up

5. attiilnrnnaeo cta ady

6. einntrtnoaila eshnlfdrate yad

7. sretrpeeepcousjrtc nekas eekp

8. igtsebg laoatgc rvee

9. teh safoinh elsavtif

10. emweraonlt ayd

11. tanu itccra eetm-pu

Above is the list of anagrams! In this post I am going to translate each one and discuss what these mean and explore what we can expect. The first one is ‘Did you notice?!’. At first I looked at this one and assumed that the following list of anagrams were related to this phrase however it was confirmed by Megg (via the comments section) that this is going to be an upcoming post on the Club Penguin Blog where the team are going to reveal some little changes that occurred to the Club Penguin app. I do believe that these changes have already occurred with the release of the Inside Out Party however I am not entirely sure if I am true. I know that one of the changes is that they have animated the bell on the reception desk within the lobby inside of the Puffle Hotel. Apparently if you walk next to it, it should automatically DING!

There must be other changes that are going to be revealed in this post. It makes me wonder why Club Penguin are paying attention to these little details on the app. What about the web version? Perhaps this posts says a lot more about the future of Club Penguin as well as what changes have occurred. With Club Penguin focusing on the app with these changes, does this confirm that the app is going to have some kind of priority over the web version in the future. What do you think?

Blue Reviews: Rainbow Puffle Party

Hello everyone!

Welcome to another ‘Blue Reviews’ where I evaluate the monthly parties/events that occur in Club Penguin. For each party I review, I will explore four areas in which the party is going to be reviewed upon. These are: Story, Visuals, Content and Durability. After reviewing these four areas, I will then conclude my review with a Verdict! This summarises what I have mentioned throughout the review and everything will be averaged into a score out of 10. I hope you will enjoy my review on this months party…

Rainbow Puffle Party!

Island Discussion #7: The Wilderness

Hello everyone!

Welcome to another edition of Island Discussion! Today I will be trying to unravel some mysteries about the strange island of Club Penguin. We, penguins, know a lot about Club Penguin history and how the island has evolved but some history has been left blank as we (yearly) approach various mysteries. The mystery I am going to discuss about today is the Wilderness…

Sure, we have explored the Wilderness in several events/parties/missions but there seems to be more of it that we do not know about. For example, who can explain this?

This structure was first sighted in Operation: Puffle. According to the map, it is called the River Cave and it certainly does not look natural. It was not really BIG at the time since the main focus of the party was to save the Puffles. I was intrigued by it for a while and over the months (since then) a few other people were too. It was mainly because of this leaked image.

It does look quite foggy but that is the purpose of it. It was a file called the “Fog Forest” and it was accidentally reached on March 13th 2014 via a link. There are two things that stood out for me in this image and one of them is the lake in the bottom right hand corner. Does it not look very similar to the one located on the map? Also you can faintly see a penguin with a giant Puffle in the background. The penguin seems to be holding something but the “giant Puffle” is a bit more familiar. It looks just like the River Cave that was in Operation: Puffle! A lot of people also thought this and due to a recent video, we must be correct!

The following clip was posted on the Club Penguin Blog shortly before the Halloween Party started. It was hinted that it had something to do with Puffle Wild (an unreleased iOS app for Apple devices). To me, the video did not seem to advertise the app as such but more on some little details. You can view the video via the link:

http://www.clubpenguin.com/blog/2014/10/video-pages-explorers-journal

 It is very interesting to watch. Especially the style of the video seemed to make it stand out more and this unusual attempt is very intriguing. Megg described it had something to do with “the eyes of a great explorer”. Does this hint more about the mysterious Wilderness? Also the way it was presented made it look more sacred and personal since it was from a particular explorer’s view. Maybe this explorer is someone we do not know or someone we do know. Could it be a new mascot? My other theory is that it could be something to do with ?????? since this being has been casually lurking around the island…

Moving on, I have been able to relate a particular stage – in the video – with the Fog Forest image. The only difference is, is that it has been slightly modified and coloured! I wonder if you spotted this too…

As you can see, the so-called penguin turns out to be a statue holding (what could be) a Puffle? Also the River Cave is a different colour to the one in Operation: Puffle. This could be something to do with the lighting of the party, since it was dark. Or the cave itself could have been re-done since. Overall the image can relate to the Fog Forest as it clearly shows the penguin and the “giant Puffle”.

That is one element of the strange Wilderness. It is still unknown whether this is new or old but judging by the style of the video, it could show that this was observations from an earlier date. This could also explain the colour of the River Cave as it could have tarnished since then. Also the setting looks bright and beautiful whereas it looks dull and glum in the Fog Forest image. Maybe something bad could have happened at the time, making it a wreckage of what the Wilderness did look like. Furthermore this statue was not seen in Operation: Puffle which hints that this statue is new. It could be old and could have deteriorated over time however the Fog Forest image does not support that theory.

Throughout the video there are still sketches of the Wilderness but none of them link to any other evidence we have collected so far. Most of the video shows the explorer questioning a lot of the scenery. I can guess that the modifications to it has got to have something to do with the new Puffles that can be unlocked in the new Puffle Wild app. I think they might have some super powers. At some point in the video it showed us a frozen state of a water falls which could be because of one of the new Puffle’s ability to freeze things. In some advertisements shown about the app, you can see some oddly shaped o berries which could signify a different effect on each one. What I wonder is if Puffle Wild will be connected to the online version of Club Penguin. The fact that new Puffles can be adopted on the app, means that you can care for them online too but it seems a bit too vague if there was not a party on this either. I wonder if November will be the month for this. Since Puffle Wild is said to release its beta soon, could mean that it could tie in with a party too. I don’t know.

That is all for today! Since it is an Island Discussion, I would really appreciate it if you can discuss with each other in the comments section and maybe some of you may have stronger evidence than me. Feel free to share any ideas on this topic and share this with your buddies.

Thanks for reading this post and stay tuned for some updates on this posts and future Island Discussions.

-Blue