I sense that Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket is going to take over my life - hands-on

I have fond memories of those early, obsessive days of Pokemon Go. When it was shiny, new, and exciting. I do get why some people are still into it, but I don’t regret the fact that I slowly weaned myself off the game. There’s something about Pokemon’s never-ending treadmill of collecting and improving that lends itself perfectly to the brutally compelling loop of mobile gaming - but I was glad to be out.

But now, with Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket, I fear that I’m back in again.

This is a good kind of fear, though. Like the sort you get before you get onto a terrifying-looking rollercoaster. I only played a small slice of this new digital iteration of Pokemon’s card collector and battler, but that was enough to know that once this comes out, I’m going to be all over it. It’ll be a bed game. A train game. A toilet game. A ‘my wife is taking ages in the shop’ game. But - perhaps most importantly – it’ll be the sort of mobile game that I boot and play in time that isn’t wasted waiting for something or another. It’ll be a game I proactively play for the game’s sake.

There have been digital representations of the Pokemon TCG before, of course. There’s been a few, in fact. But I’ve never really felt grabbed by any of them. An hour of the new TCG Pocket feels boundlessly more enticing and exciting days of play in its predecessors - and that’s thanks to a few brave and clever design decisions.

The bravery is perhaps the most impressive. The Pokemon TCG is an established, beloved game. It’s popular, successful, and appeals equally well to the sort of people who play international championships and those who play loose versions of the game with their own made-up rules. But Pokemon TCG Pocket says: forget all that. Let’s do something new.

To be clear, it’s the same game at its very heart. But the existing trading card game is treated more as a framework. The goal is to create a new game that evokes the same feelings and follows the same broad flow as the original tabletop game - but is nevertheless optimized for mobile and digital play with efficiency that borders on the brutal. The result is excellent.

Decks of cards are sliced down from the main game’s 60 to just 20 cards. The concept of the six ‘Prize Cards’, drawn to your hand upon defeating an opposing Pokemon and used to mark the path to victory, are gone. Now it’s point-based, with each knock-out rewarding a victory point, of which three are required to win.

The biggest change of all: energy cards are gone. One energy is automatically generated at the start of each turn. If you use a multi-type deck, it tops out at three types, and which type of energy drops at the start of each turn is entirely random - much as it would be drawing cards from an energy-bloated deck. So, smaller deck, shorter games, less faffing around, and less ability to get stuck just drawing cards for multiple turns. The result is a version of the game that is snappier, faster, and far more suited for on-the-go mobile play when you have a few minutes to spare.

Even the cards are different, to some degree. The Pokemon Company is focused on showing off new snazzy full-art cards that animate; the camera zooms in and pans through beautiful environments revealing the world of Pokemon beyond the card. This is something obviously only possible with digital cards, at least this side of some world-shattering breakthrough in quantum physics - so of course they’re showing it off. But more interesting is the utility of cards, where familiar-looking cards with beloved artwork from the full three-decade history of the Pokemon TCG are re-deployed here - but the skills on those cards and how they’re balanced in the game are often unique to the Pocket version of the game.

Again, everything is specifically balanced towards this mobile experience, maximizing the best possible version of the Pokemon Trading Card game for the format.

I like that word, actually. Maximized. In a sense, Pocket is maximal minimalism, a glorious contradiction. It minimizes the Pokemon TCG experience down to a much more streamlined format - but does so in a maximal way, where the developers have made the absolute most of what remains.

Making the most also just means making it slick as hell, so the game is also defined by lovely-looking and well-animated menus. The whole thing feels like a premium experience - which is something that could never be said for the previous mobile iterations of the TCG. This feels like an app I’ll enjoy spending time in. All of this, you can sense, adds up to something that could be perilously addictive for all of us, especially those like myself who have playground nostalgia for battering people with my equally-battered Charizard.

In content terms there’s challenges to play against AI, plus matchmaking to challenge fellow humans. Obviously a huge degree of the appeal of this game is in building decks and creating interesting setups for play - plus collecting cards. It’s here, dear reader, where money comes into the equation.

You can tell this is an important part of the game. Part of the lovely presentational touches I mentioned earlier is things like lavish pack-opening animations, where each booster pack acquired can be opened with a flourish, cards revealed individually, common to rarest, like you’re doing a breathless pack opening for YouTube. The cool digital effects on the rarer cards are awesome to look at - and obviously there’s a collection aspect, too, where over time various booster sets will release, each begging to be made into a complete collection.

Boosters will be unique to the game and not match up to the cadence or theming of the current real-life card sets. Boosters can be acquired free - but of course, you can get them more quickly by pony(ta)ing up some cash.

At base, you’ll get one booster every 12 hours; so this works out as two free packs per day, as long as you’re playing regularly enough to pick up the packs (idle players will stop receiving packs until they return). But then there are ways to speed this up; hourglass items that can be both earned and purchased that ‘fast forward’ the countdown to your next pack, and there’s a battle pass style monthly subscription, one of the benefits of which is one extra booster every 24 hours.

As well as all this there’s enjoyable cosmetic nonsense to spend on: play mats, card sleeves, and so on. The monetization cues are taken directly from the tabletop game, and in terms of feeling inoffensive, it works - though at a preview event with plenty of preloaded currency is obviously not the place to judge. The real judgment here will come when we can experience the final game, with our real money.

But, honestly - I can see myself spending. Even a very short period of time playing Pokemon Trading Card Game Classic tells me that this is scratching the right itches in the right way. It’s that rare mobile game I’ll be there for day one - and I could see myself becoming a competitive collector and player in this app not just for a little bit - but longer term. I’m optimistic - and, of course, scared for my wallet. I look forward to next month.

Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket will release for mobile on October 30, 2024