Playing Pokemon Sleep is like adopting a Tamagotchi that feeds on sleep and personal data.
Pokemon is one of the biggest and strangest media franchises in existence. Look beyond the mainline RPGs, and you’ll find a multitude of spin-off games in every conceivable shape and size. From apps that help you brush your teeth to safari-like photography games, fans have never been short on ways to play with their favourite monsters beyond simply catching them all. Draw rings around them, walk with them, watch them on a virtual TV, play with them using cards and brawl with them in stadium events. Your options are not just endless, but always multiplying.
So why is it that when The Pokemon Company announced an app called Pokemon Sleep back in 2019, every fan raised a collective eyebrow in scepticism? Maybe it’s because the mainline franchise has not enjoyed good word-of-mouth in recent years. Maybe it’s because gamers are generally wary of mobile games, and prefer to keep their Pokemon on the Switch. Or maybe it’s because inviting the Pokemon Company not just into your home, but your actual bed, feels like a step too far.
Either way, I’m a Pokemon fan and I write about video games. Thus, I felt obligated to bite the bullet and try this weird new Pokemon game out so you, dear reader, can find out if it might actually help you get some sleep. After playing Pokemon Sleep for the past two weeks, here’s what I learned:
How does this thing work?
In case you’ve missed the boat on Pokemon Sleep, think of it as an app that does for sleep what Pokemon Go does for exercise. The game begins with Professor Neroli (the amount of Pokemon Professors to keep track of in this franchise is really getting out of hand) informing the player of strange phenomena occurring to Pokemon in nearby islands, thanks to a very sleepy Snorlax residing within them. You’re tasked with observing this Snorlax to figure out what the heck it’s doing to all the Pokemon around it… by sleeping.
The app tracks your sleep patterns by using your phone’s microphone and accelerometer to figure out exactly how long you’ve been sleeping and calculate the quality of your sleep based on that. After a good (or bad) night’s rest, the player will awaken to a crowd of Pokemon that have gathered around Snorlax to sleep - but their ‘sleep styles’ will vary depending on your ‘Sleep Score’, which in turn depends on how much time you spent ‘Dozing’, ‘Snoozing’ and ‘Slumbering’ during your sleep. Each night, the game will determine which of these three categories your sleep falls into, drawing from the movement and breathing data it recorded.
To its credit, Pokemon Sleep packages all this data for the player in a very simple way. Based on the quality of your sleep, different kinds of Pokemon will appear in the morning, and you can then feed them Biscuits to befriend them. Once they’re your friends, they’ll get to work around camp to gather berries and cooking ingredients. Three times a day, the ever-gourmandising Snorlax will demand a meal that you’ll have to cook up using ingredients gathered around camp. Snorlax will also feed off of berries and your Sleep Score to get bigger and stronger. The bigger Snorlax gets, the more diverse the Pokemon it attracts become.
After a week, you’ll bid one Snorlax goodbye to go research another Snorlax in one of the three available locations Pokemon Sleep unlocks for you - as long as you’re making good progress and getting lots of sleep. So if you’ve been playing a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3 recently, you’re screwed.
What two weeks of Pokemon-infested sleep have done to me
I’ve been playing Pokemon Sleep for roughly two weeks now, after swearing to myself that I would immediately uninstall the game the moment this article was written. I just don’t like the idea of giving an app like this, or any app in general, access to my personal data. It’s one thing to have Instagram and TikTok quietly gather data from your clicks, but allowing this app to run in the nighttime when you’re not awake? You are actively choosing to hand The Pokemon Company your data every single night, in exchange for a hedonistic Pokemon that loves Moo-Moo Milk and Apple Curry.
Loathe as I am to admit it, things have changed. I’ve really enjoyed my time with Pokemon Sleep for the most part, largely due to my dumb lizard brain that yearns to convert every aspect of my lifestyle into a series of numbers and statistics. There is a weird amount of satisfaction derived from waking up each morning and finding out exactly how many hours I’ve slept through the night, and racking up sleep scores that go into the millions for getting the rest my body needs. Like my time walking with Pokemon Go, it felt good to be rewarded simply for engaging in healthy sleeping habits with cute little virtual pets.
Like most mobile games, Pokemon Sleep hits the ground running at first. It introduces you to your one-week-long Snorlax buddy and after just a few restful nights, gives you more than enough Pokemon to form a party. After that, the grind begins. Befriending Pokemon requires biscuits, and buying biscuits requires Sleep Points, and you only get a few of those per day. Thus, you have to pick one Pokemon out of five or six to befriend every day, if any of them even seem worthwhile. Some Pokemon take just two or three biscuits to befriend. Evolved Pokemon are much harder to befriend, and require the use of even more expensive Master Biscuits.
In short, Pokemon Sleep is a mobile game and it barely hides the fact. The grind sets in even quicker if you’re not getting sufficient sleep and not earning enough Sleep Points per day. For example: I managed to progress enough in the game to try out the game’s second map, Cyan Beach by week two. My colleague did not get nearly as much sleep as I did however, and was relegated to the same map for two weeks in a row. For him, Cyan Beach stayed out of reach.
Personal data and other irritations
I like Pokemon Sleep, but it is a tad fussier than most mobile games. Most mobile games are only played at your leisure and designed around the fact; Marvel Snap’s five-minute matches, Pokemon Go’s Sleep Mode and PUBG Mobile’s simplified UI are all products of on-the-go convenience. Pokemon Sleep is the opposite of convenient. You have to charge your phone, leave the screen on throughout the night, find a table next to your bed to place it on and set aside 20 minutes upon waking up to complete assorted activities so Snorlax doesn't miss its breakfast.
The game’s sleep styles are determined by the sounds you make as you sleep. If you move around in your bed and the app detects a lot of noise, it will decide that you’re ‘snoozing’ and not ‘slumbering’. This means that if you’re sleeping with a partner and they snore, visit the bathroom or roll around during their sleep, their actions will skew your hard-earned results. There’s also the small matter of the game recording the gnarly sounds you make during the night and replaying them for you the next morning, much like a cat proudly depositing the corpse of a dead rat at your feet. I feed you, I take care of you, and I make you a valued and cherished part of my life. And this is how you treat me?
Looking past the small gameplay nitpicks and privacy concerns, however, my single biggest issue with this game is its loading screens. As I’ve mentioned before, it takes about 20 minutes every morning to level your Pokemon, gather berries, cook Snorlax a meal and look through your sleep data. I’m convinced that half of that time is actually spent going from one menu to the next, watching the same loading screen pop up again and again like you’re in an inane episode of Black Mirror. If you have things to do in the morning, it can be especially frustrating waiting through menus before finally starting your day.
Verdict
Pokemon Sleep is a cute game. It’s easy to compare it to the Tamagotchis of yore: endlessly hungry, fussy and needy, but ultimately rewarding and addictive for the short-term. I can’t see myself using Pokemon Sleep for the rest of my life, but I definitely want to keep going and see what Pokemon these other islands house, and find the ever-evasive Ditto. I like cooking for Snorlax, and I like checking in on my Pokemon even if they have a lot less personality than I’m used to from other games.
What will keep me from playing it for more than a few months are its little irritations (the loading screens in particular), which add up over time to infect an already thin gameplay loop with tedium. You also have to be comfortable with The Pokemon Company listening in on your sleep, the consequences of which I do my best to ignore when placing my phone down next to my face every night. Much like Samsung expanded its mobile lineup to include earbuds, watches, tablets and the like, this app is a blatant attempt to expand the Pokemon ecosystem beyond its natural limitations, and by jove, it might have just paid off.