Pocket Card Jockey is quite possibly one of the funniest concepts I've ever personally come across for a video game. Horse racing that's accomplished via Solitaire? That's just...hilarious. But Solitaire and Horse Racing have always been somewhat entwined within the fabric of my life, and both from the same person, my grandmother.

When I was a little girl, my mother worked a lot, and as a result, I often spent a good portion of my time at my grandparents house. My grandmother and I watched the horse races and played Solitaire regularly, and eventually we started going to horse races in person. My grandmother was a big gambler, and it was fun to see her win money on horse racing, and even sometimes we'd make small bets on our Solitaire games. So the two have always been somewhat compressed together in one way or another, and when I discovered Pocket Card Jockey, I not only got a laugh out of such a ridiculous concept, but I also found it extremely close to my heart just because of my past with both hobbies.

I, unlike my grandmother, have never been a big gambler. I also haven't been to the horse races in years. But I do still occasionally load up Solitaire on my tablet or my laptop and play a few rounds here and there, mostly when I'm feeling stressed out or nostalgic. But the difference is, Pocket Card Jockey is much harder than regular Solitaire because you've got a pressure on you to do well in a time limit. This makes it very easy to screw up, and as a result, the game is exceedingly difficult for me, despite my love for it, which upsets me. I just don't grace well under pressure. For two things so prominently featured in my life - cards and horses - I somehow can't do them together when necessary, and this makes me extremely depressed, because the game is cute, and fun, and I want to love it, but it's hard to love something when it regularly makes you feel even stupider than you already know you are.

I rode horses as a child, did I ever tell you guys that?

When I was a little girl I took horseback riding lessons. My mother was a huge fan of horses and cowboys her whole life, and as a result, I wound up riding horses as a hobby. I don't dislike horses, for the record, but it wasn't exactly my first choice in outdoor activity. I'm not saying I was a completely housebound nerd who subsisted solely on video games and books. I was a somewhat outdoorsy girl; I loved camping and hiking, I love bike riding. I even enjoyed my brief time spent riding horses. So it isn't like it's a hobby I'm only somewhat familiar with, no, it's something I'm extremely familiar with. Cleaning hooves, brushing down, mane maintenance, I still remember how to do it all and lately have been feeling extremely nostalgic for the act of horseback riding. I found it rather calming.

And yet, both these things that I love - Solitaire and horses - that I find calming, I instead find incredibly stressful in Pocket Card Jockey.

I have the same issue with the Professor Layton franchise. While I love everything about said franchise, the artwork, the music and the writing, and while I really love puzzles, I simply cannot play those games because 99% of the puzzles are math based it seems like and I simply cannot do any math whatsoever. Even being faced with math, even seemingly simple math, makes me have a panic attack and shut down for hours. As a result, something I'd really truly love is made inaccessible to me all because of one aspect of it, just like Pocket Card Jockey. The stress, and these aren't even really games most would consider stressful, makes something that should be fun not fun at all. When you've got enough problems with your brain as I do, the last thing you want is a hobby that makes you feel even fucking stupider, and that's what Pocket Card Jockey does.

And it sucks, because I love it. I love the vibrancy and the cuteness and the overall concept, but I can't handle doing so poorly at something I normally, under regular circumstances, would be good at.

Video games are meant to be an escape from my mental problems, not a reminder of how challenged I am on a day to day basis. I can't rate the game poorly, because it's not a bad game by any means, but I also can't say I've enjoyed my time with it because it makes me so unbelievably unhappy, because I'm just too dumb to play it. So instead, what I'm left with is a game I really like made up of things I really love that makes me feel really goddamned stupid, and that hurts like hell.

The game has a cute little art style and is so bouncy and colorful, and is such a unique concept, and I know a review is supposed to tell you whether something is worth playing or not, and sure, I think if you can handle what it's giving you, then it's totally worth playing, but it isn't even that it's not worth playing for me, it's that I literally cannot handle playing it because I'm too mentally locked off. I want to be smarter. I want to be more capable. I want to be able to enjoy things so many other people are able to enjoy so easily. But I'm not, and I can't, and I think Pocket Card Jockey has finally forced me to accept that maybe it's time I acknowledged that I'm broken in ways that can't be fixed, and in ways that make me unable to enjoy something.

I still love Solitaire. I still like horses.

I just don't like me.

And I'm beginning to wonder if I ever really will.

My name is Maggie. I'm a queer autistic artist/author. You can support me monthly via Patreon, tip me over at Ko-fi or buy a book or other merch at my Payhip. Thanks for reading!

i saw somebody on another web forum recently say that the 3ds was a disappointment. and although i'd call it probably the best console ever (neck and neck with the ps2) i actually understand where they were coming from. if you bought a 3ds and decided 'im gonna hang out with my old reliable nintendo franchise friends on here' and stuck to the well acclaimed games 'super mario 3d land' 'kirby: triple deluxe,' 'mario kart 7,' 'donkey kong country returns 3d,' 'pokemon y,' and 'ocarina of time 3d' i think you would be completely right to remember the 3ds as a mediocrity. every game i listed is good and even great. all of these games feature on the hallowed halls of lists of '3ds games you just gotta play'.. but none of them are 'best in class.' they are not what made the 3ds special. you would miss the point entirely. by this metric the 3ds is one of nintendo's worst systems (however by the same metric, the wii u would almost certainly be their best.. food for thought).

pocket card jockey is different. it is special. it takes the familiar, the budget, the vocabulary of the 5/10 game and puts them all into a spectacle. i have been an acolyte for the 3ds for a long time, and this game is a principal part of why that is. pocket card jockey is a phenom. it defends the stylus. it defends streetpass (or at least it did at the time. i would probably just save my battery life at this moment in history.). it is the rare game where you can give it countless hours but the time spent on it was nearly always enjoyed... there is always room to grow, room to learn, there are strategies to always master. you can always think faster. sometimes you play perfectly and still lose. sometimes you think about the races you coulda won if you'd just done one thing differently. you can always fit in a quick race. it is the heart of the 3ds. the rare game i can recommend absolutely to any person without any reservations.