Chris Scullion is a games media legend and VGC‘s deputy editor.
Earlier this year I shared the harrowing tale of the grip Disney Solitaire had on my free time and wallet, and the way I finally managed to break free by essentially catching up with its content and reaching the ‘end’.
At the end of the article I recommended: “Play Pocket Card Jockey on Apple Arcade instead.” After writing it I decided to take my own advice and started playing it again. It had been a while but almost immediately I remembered why I loved it so much.
If it hasn’t trotted across your path yet, Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On is the work of Pokémon studio Game Freak, and is essentially a remake of the original Pocket Card Jockey, a downloadable 3DS game that was delisted along with the rest of the 3DS eShop in 2023.
Released just a couple of months before that 3DS eShop closure, Ride On follows the same idea: it’s a horse racing game where you’re given a young horse and take it through a series of races until it retires, at which point you move onto the next horse.
The twist is that each race consists of a series of rounds of Golf Solitaire (the same type as in Disney Solitaire and Candy Crush Solitaire). Each round you clear gives you energy which lets you position your horse on the track: good positioning is key to maintaining speed, avoiding jostling with other horses and keeping as much stamina as possible for the final stretch.
It’s a strange idea but a wonderfully executed one, and while the racing itself is enjoyable the real heart of the game comes in the horses themselves. There’s a random element to a horse’s initial stats which means it’s hard to tell exactly how its career is going to go at first: you could end up with a useless horse which is quite literally a ‘mare to ride, guiding it through a miserable career of back-of-the-pack anonymity. Or you could get a little hotshot which shows great promise and feels born to race.
Naturally, your ability to play Solitaire and position your horse still plays a big part in its success, and the result is an oddly compelling bond between man and (digital cartoon) beast. If you do end up with a rubbish horse, that moment you make a podium finish is one of great pride: not only for you, but for them. If that hot prospect ends up with an underwhelming career filled, you’ll curse it for an opportunity missed but also feel a surprising amount of guilt.
There’s also something heartwarming about the way the game deals with age. Each horse’s career can be played through in an hour or two, and as you race with them you’ll see their stats grow and its racing improve as it gets older. Then you’ll hit the turning point in its career and you’ll start to slow down, winning fewer and fewer races as it reaches old age.
This is not a game where you build your stats to the max and keep winning forever. Pocket Card Jockey is a reminder that life isn’t like that, and even the fastest slow down eventually. Life goes on and you move onto your next horse – then the next, and the next after that.
It’s also a lovely reminder of the circle of life: you can breed your retired horses and they’ll have offspring who may inherit some of their traits. Two champion horses you nurtured once upon a time can now live on in their child, and who knows: maybe their kid will reach heights their parents didn’t manage to hit.
Unfortunately, this notion extends to the game itself. As an Apple Arcade exclusive, my rediscovered love for Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On is one slightly overshadowed by fear that I shouldn’t get too attached to it, because one day it could all be gone.
Just as the 3DS version became delisted when the shop itself disappeared, many Apple Arcade games live a finite existence. There will likely come a time when it will join the 157 Apple Arcade games that have already been removed from the service, and will receive the mobile game equivalent of having its hooves turned to glue.
It’s a problem with the service. As much as I love Apple Arcade – I’ve happily been a paid subscriber since day one – when an Apple Arcade exclusive is pulled from the store, it’s effectively gone forever, unless its developer decides to release it on another platform.
Some of these are just the Apple Arcade ‘+’ versions of games (which remove ads, microtransactions and like), meaning their standard versions are still available on the main App Store. Others – like Cut the Rope Remastered, Dr Who: Hidden Mysteries, Samurai Jack, SpongeBob SolitairePants, The Survivalists, Rayman Mini, Shovel Knight Dig, Disney Melee Mania, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis, Steven Universe: Unleash the Light, Amazing Bomberman and many more – were Apple Arcade exclusives on iOS, and are now gone forever.
It’s a preservation nightmare, essentially, and while other paid subscription services that let you download games to your device – such as PlayStation Plus’s monthly ‘Essential’ games and the old Xbox Games With Gold system – allow you to keep them in your library and keep playing them after they’ve been delisted, that isn’t the case on Apple Arcade: when it’s gone, it’s gone.
And so I continue to play Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On, growing a strong fondness for each little horse I race with, but trying not to get too attached because I know one day they’ll be gone. I can only hope when the same thing happens to the game itself, there are plans for it to have offspring too.
