Someone at some time at gamefreak thought “hey, why don’t we combine horse racing with solitaire. It’ll be great.” It’s an unusual idea for sure, combine two totally unrelated ideas and effectively combine them. But gamefreak made it work. Pocket Card Jockey is a weird premise and ridiculously complex to boot.
To be the best jockey is my dream.
Pocket Card Jockey knows it’s a pretty weird concept. Its justification almost outdoes its premise in terms of extravagance. You are an impatient jockey who just wants to get into the saddle and race. The thing is, you aren’t very good at it. As a matter of fact the first horse you jump on ends up killing you. At Walhalla you meet an angel who is willing to give you a chance to fulfill your dream to become a great jockey. The problem still remains that you are a bad jockey. So the angels asks the rider what he actually is good at. The now deceased boy replies with a firm “I dunno” before explaining he was getting pretty good at Solitaire. The angel therefore decides to make horse racing more like solitaire and brings the kid back to life. Its set-up is pretty ridiculous and that is kind of where the story ends. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any characters or dialogue in the game. On you path to becoming the greatest horse racer, you meet several different colorful personalities. There is the old and wise manager who picks the races you will do and is there to encourage the player. There also are several horse owners who are all colorful and different. The game doesn’t tell a story in any way, but the interaction with these quirky characters are at the least endearing.
Nothing really special with the occasional quirky joke.
Deep and fun.
Horse riding and solitaire sounds like a fairly novel and easy game. But in reality, it’s nothing short of deep and engaging. The game is fairly difficult to boot too. The main gameplay element is split up into two sections. Solitaire and directing your horse. Players play a game of solitaire. You draw a card and you either need to pick a card on the board that’s either one number higher or lower than the card you picked. You can only pick the top card from the layers of cards. Those are the basic rules of solitaire. Every time you manage to remove a card from the playing field your horse gets vitality which it can use in the racing aspect of the game. The more cards you remove in one turn the more energy your horse receives. Fail to clear the board and the cards remaining on the field will lower your horse’s mood.
After a game of solitaire, the player must choose where the horse must run. Running ahead of the rest isn’t a viable option as the track has something called Comfort zones. These zones are the spots your horse feels best at, losing less stamina and gaining more energy. Every horse is a certain type that likes to run in certain spots. Some like to run in front of the pack while some like to stick close behind the leader. The player directs the horse by drawing a line to where they need to go. The vitality gained in solitaire is of importance here as the more vitality the horse has the longer you can draw your distance. Any vitality not used can be kept up to one hundred or converted into more energy for your horse. While on the track there are items the player can pick up for buffs. These buffs aren’t just picked up and used however. The player needs to collect the item and during the next card game manage to remove the card from the field to gain its ability. Horses can also accidentally bump into you and send you back to a spot you don’t want to. Running higher on the track reduces the amount of cards you need to play with but means your horse will have to run longer distances in turns. Having a lower amount of cards on in front of you might help if your horse has a bad mood. When your horse is in a bad mood it won’t listen too well to what you want it to do. If your horse gets to upset it will runaway and become uncontrollable resulting in loss of energy and stamina. A happy horse however will lose stamina slower while vitality converted into energy will be greater.
There is a lot to hold account for in this a game. Luckily the game does a decent (if not lengthy) job of explaining everything to the player. After everything is explained players will know what to do but tend to still mess up is some parts. Either you yourself or the game will remind you what you did wrong and how to improve it. Expect to lose quite a few matches before winning a lot. To really win races players will need to breed their own horses. Which is an entirely different beast altogether.
Every horse has different statistics like comfort zone type, stamina and speed. Horses can also learn new abilities like giving the player infinite time during solitaire or gaining extra energy when right behind another horse. These skills can be gained by collecting the skill item of the track and playing it off the field. There are three different game modes. Growth mode in which you get a young horse that can level up and become better until it matures. If a horse matures it will enter mature mode. In this mode, your horse doesn’t improve and you basically have three lives. That means that if a horse loses three times it retires. When a horse retires it can mate with other retired horses that will result in a better horse with skills and traits from their parents. Inbreeding results in loss of stats and if your horse gets more wins in mature mode its offspring will be stronger too. Its breeding system is not much unlike Pokemon, another Game Freak game.
What’s so great about Pocket Card Jokey is that the main element of racing and solitaire is deep but fun and easy to understand once everything sinks in. All the while the breeding aspect of the game gives number-crunchers and strategists the ultimate tools to create their uberhorse they want, while people who care less can just pair horses and still get better offspring. The game has quite some stuff going on but more importantly every aspect is a blast to play with.
The base game is solid in itself.
Not without its problems.
Everything looks nice and clean in Pocket Card Jockey as to be expected from a Nintendo quality game. The art style is done by the same people who did the Rhythm Heaven games so everything looks clean, cute and colorful. Everything is easy to understand and navigating menus is a breeze and goes smoothly. What doesn’t go as smoothly however is the frame rate. When the action on the top screen gets heavy the frame rate tends to drop harshly. At some points the game just kind of freezes for a second. It’s never a long time or impacts the game experience but it is jarring to see a game that doesn’t push the limits of the console still manages to have slowdown that bad. The game looks it part but tends to run less than optimal even if it doesn’t affect the actual game.
Some neat designs and strong visuals make the game look great.
Closing note:
Pocket Card Jockey is the real deal. It’s deep and engaging but more importantly, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. From the simple and fast solitaire games to the strategic placing of your horse in the race the game manages to be fun all the way through. It’s one of those games that will grab you and not let go. Its plot premise is even more out there than the game’s concept and its characters fun and diverse. Pocket Card Jockey doesn’t tell a story but its character interaction is fun nonetheless. Visually it looks the part. It looks clean and colorful even if the frame rate drops heavily during non-integral parts of the game. Pocket Card Jockey is a game that will have you coming back for more, time and time again.
