Game Freak is known for the incredibly successful Pokémon franchise but every so often it will release an original title and flex the team’s creative muscles. These games have varied in quality, with titles like Drill Dozer and HarmoKnight being well loved, and games like Little Town Hero and Giga Wrecker coming away with mixed reviews…to put it nicely. Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! thankfully falls into the former category as a pretty enjoyable merger of two classic games: horse racing and solitaire. 
The gameplay loop in Pocket Card Jockey is very straightforward: the player has to complete a game of solitaire as fast as possible and the more cards cleared from the board, the more energy the player’s horse gets. The game then transitions to positioning the horse on the race course, with players having to factor in the placement of other horses, potential power-ups, the difficulty of the next solitaire game and how much energy to use. After all, if the horse tires out too early into the race then it will stumble in that final mad dash to the finish, where the results of all the player’s successes and failings in that race come to fruition.
The gameplay is very straightforward but has enough twists and extras that make the player feel like they have some control. Horses level-up and have their own skills and specialities, which should be factored into the strategy. Power-ups and consumable items can also be utilised to give the horse an edge in the race, often making the final gallop to the goal or the rush solitaire game much easier. These items aren’t always available, however, so should be thought of as a nice addition and not relied upon.
The most important factor is the player’s ability to think fast and solve solitaire as quickly as possible. The solitaire in Pocket Card Jockey is not like traditional solitaire, though, which asks the player to reveal and remove all the cards on a board and deck in suit and number order – only able to move one card to another on the board if its colour is the opposite (so red on black and black on red).
Pocket Card Jockey solitaire removes the colour and suit requirement all together, instead focusing entirely on the number. The player picks a starting card to take off the board and then can remove any card that has a number adjacent to the one before it (with King and Ace being adjacent). This means the player can go both up and down in number. If there are no numbers on the board that can be removed, a card must be taken from the side deck and worked from that instead. The game keeps going till either all cards are removed from the board or the deck is emptied, and the remaining time left over becomes energy for the horse (with any leftover cards removing that energy instead).
It’s not traditional solitaire at all really, just taking the very basics of the game, but it is a lot of fun and can be an extremely satisfying experience when a perfect chain of 10+ cards form. The strategy was successful, all the right choices were made, and that dopamine rush feels oh-so-good. It’s just like real horse betting (but with far less stakes)!
Another reason for the addictive nature of Pocket Card Jockey is its mobile game feel. The original game was a Nintendo 3DS title that was then later ported to phones, adapted to fit the mobile model of picking up and playing for a few minutes at a time – complete with daily challenges. Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! is a port of the mobile version and it comes through quite clearly in the user interface and pacing. It’s a pick-up-and-play type of game, enjoyed in short bursts – thankfully without any microtransactions to bog down the experience.
Another highlight of Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! is the writing. It is unexpectedly hilarious, starting off with the player character being so bad at horse racing that they make a literal deal with an angel, betting their immortal soul, for the skills to ride a horse properly. The game actually contextualises the solitaire, which is hilarious, and the colourful cast of horse owners that are met over the course of the game could rival any Pokémon Gym group.
Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! is a very enjoyable high-speed solitaire game that has horse racing and breeding mechanics mixed into it. While long stretches of playtime can make the game feel very repetitive and there is a lack of real mechanical depth to the systems, it’s designed to be picked up and played in brief moments. If played occasionally, for a few minutes at a time, the player will experience a very fun and highly addictive puzzle game, with all the highs of enjoying a horse race and none of the (monetary) lows.
