Pokemon Gets a New App: Hands-on With Pocket, a Digital Twist on the Trading Card Game

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For Pokemon fans that don't know how to play the collectible card game, you'll soon be able to learn by playing on your phone for free. I got to spend time playing an early preview of Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket, a digital app version of the card game, where a finger swipe slices open foil-wrapped booster packs, flips coins and launches me into online battles with friends, all the while I'm getting tutorials on the rules (and maybe a slight thirst to keep adding to a digital collection).

There are many flavors of Pokemon fans, with a media franchise today that spans across decades of cartoons, video games, movies, and a trading card game that started in the '90s. But with this new app, the company is hoping to recruit more card collectors with a casual phone game — and with the hope it could be as popular as the Pokemon Go app that launched eight years ago.

By no means am I a Pokemon expert, but I know the world of Pokemon through playing video games and catching episodes of Pokemon the Series in the late '90s and early 2000s. I couldn't help but feel this app was targeted at me, a millennial who kept a few of the "pretty" cards I found in packs, but now just uses them as bookmarks. These days, I have my own kids who are getting really into the franchise and are collecting cards of their own in school — and during Halloween.

For the past few years, my kids have been coming home from trick or treating with packs of Pokemon cards in their candy buckets. (You can find big bags of Pokemon cards sold in the Halloween candy aisle.) 

Enter the new app, Pocket, which is launching Oct. 30 — just in time for all the families who might be sorting through a stack of cards after binging on candy and looking for an easy way to learn to play. 

When you start the app, you get two small booster packs of cards to open per day. If you don't want to wait, you can pay real money to open more right away, but it's not necessary. Gain enough cards, and you can go through a tutorial to learn a simplified version of the card game to battle a random account online — or take on a friend. 

The app takes you on a very guided track to learn the ropes. For example, it can set up a deck of characters that only use the same energy type — and energy automatically generates, so there's no need to worry if you have enough energy cards. More experienced card game players can take it up a notch and customize packs for battles, or mix up characters who use different energy types. 

The app also helps point out when you might not be playing your best. I forgot to distribute an energy card, and before I ended my turn, the app acted as a coach, nudging me to not attack before making all possible moves to level up my character first.

What I found curious is how Pocket is trying to make something addictive out of the intangible, incorporating different reward elements and lively animations of cards to keep users wanting to open it every day to come back. New card booster packs and rewards generate the more you use the app, and you can also pick up extras with friends — including the chance to score some of the same cards a friend randomly opened in their daily pack.

If you want to get into a battle with someone you know, the game will generate a code that you can share to enter a private match. I found this way more entertaining than playing matches against a computer -- however, I played with someone sitting next to me as we laughed about our battle strategy. Winning brings some in-game perks, but there's no real-world reward for spending time (or money) in this app. And there's no special bonus if you happen to own physical cards. This digital game is its own separate thing.

Having it be digital opens up the opportunity for unique art in character cards, including variations with immersive art. It's a peek into what might be happening off the border of the typical card art box. In the Pikachu version of the immersive card, you see a mini movie of what's going on around him in the forest with other creatures hanging out nearby. 

For those who get a taste of gameplay in the digital version and want to learn more about the physical card game, I would recommend Pokemon Battle Academy. It's a kid-friendly battle board with several teaching packs of cards, and it's what I used to learn how to play with my kids this summer. Playing the Pocket app was a good supplement to learning the art of card battle, and I can see myself letting my kids play on my phone to get them more used to the flow and the rules -- so later I can crush them with the physical cards I saved all those years ago.