How Pokémon TCG Pocket replicates the feel of opening a physical card pack

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, announced in February and out in late October, whittles the Pokémon franchise down to its simplest form: collection. Instead of catching creatures themselves, as in Pokémon Go or any of the franchise’s mainline games, Pokémon TCG Pocket is focused only on cards — creatures on cards, but cards nonetheless. And how do you collect cards in Pokémon TCG Pocket? You open Pokémon card packs, of course.

There is something special about the physical act of opening a Pokémon card pack. It starts at your local store’s wall of Pokémon cards, shiny and full of possibility. You could just pluck one or two off the hook, but what are you leaving behind on the shelf? Once you’ve chosen a pack — with luck on your side, hopefully — the anticipation comes next. The ride home, as a kid, never felt longer. Eventually, it’s time: You rip open the pack. You might use your teeth to pull apart the seam. Maybe you’re the kind of person who grabs a pair of scissors to make a precise cut off the top. If you want to set yourself up with hype, you might take the livestreamer approach after the pack itself is open: Reorder the cards — without looking! — to make sure the rarest card is the last one you’ll see.

The physical act of opening a card pack — the sometimes nostalgic touch of how the shiny plastic tears — is a core part of the experience. So, how do you recreate that feeling digitally? 

In Pokémon TCG Pocket, Creatures Inc. and DeNA landed on a simple, effective solution: swiping. Using a finger, the player swipes the screen along a predetermined line to, effectively, tear open the card’s digital packaging. Polygon went to a preview event for Pokémon TCG Pocket earlier in September and opened a lot of packs in a short amount of time. The drag feels tactile, mimicking the act with the riiiiip sound of plastic sliced open. Players can open a single card or 10 at once, the latter of which is pretty satisfying, as it involves seeing the animation times 10 with just one swipe.

Creatures Inc. art director Satoru Nagaya said the company spent time testing Pokémon TCG Pocket’s sound design to find the most satisfying option when slicing open a pack — his research involved opening a lot of packs and listening. “Since we expect users to open packs every day, we paid particular attention to the sound they make when opening the pack,” Nagaya said. “I searched for a pleasant sound while actually opening a number of physical packs. As a result of testing various locations, such as sliding your finger around on the pack or the feel when completely opened, I think I found a sound that evokes a sense of excitement.”

Pokémon TCG Pocket mimics the anticipation of it all, too, by allowing the player to choose their pack in multiple ways: first, from a selection of three different cover art options, then from a pack in a rotating wheel of ’em, as if you’re spinning a store’s vertical display. 

“The opening experience is similar to the tabletop Pokémon TCG, and you can create your own routines for how you want to experience the game,” Creatures Inc. creative director Ryo Tsujikawa said. “Which booster pack you pick up is up to you, and I think everyone will develop their own way of enjoying the game. We paid particular attention to the process of selecting the booster pack, opening it, and looking at the cards so that it would feel fun.”

For the most part, it works: I found myself flipping through the packs in consideration of which to choose. What will I leave behind if I choose this one? What about that one? Of course, like with real cards, there’s no way to know — and yet we still do it. If you’re opening a ton of cards — including 10 at once — the act of it all starts to feel a little less special. I suspect, however, that most players will stick to their two free packs per day — a little, daily burst of serotonin.