Pokémon Sleep:
2-Month Check-in

The years that passed between the first announcement of Pokémon Sleep and the first trailer for the game had us wondering whether this app would ever see the light of day. Contrary to some people’s expectations, however, the game successfully launched on 17 July 2023.

Now that two months have passed, how did the sleep tracking game deliver on its promises of long and peaceful nights of rest?

As a big fan of Magikarp Jump, developed by the same company, Select Button, I couldn’t wait to download Pokémon Sleep. 

I also consistently (yet sometimes begrudgingly) play Pokémon GO and I knew the Pokémon GO Plus+ would serve me well in both apps. Perhaps most importantly, I needed to get my hands on the device with the most bizarre name choice since the New Nintendo 2DS XL.

The premise of the game is fairly simple: you and your team of helper Pokémon are sleeping al fresco every night, camping around a new Snorlax each week. With the help of your team, your job is to feed Snorlax as many berries and cooked dishes as you can over 7 days. After each successful night of tracking your sleep, you will get the opportunity to befriend more helpers to add to your roster.

The game's fairly straight-forward objective hides a very detailed and in-depth game loop, with several randomised elements that make each one of your helping Pokémon unique. 

The Pokémon Sleep ‘Meta’

The franchise is known to rely on a good amount of RNG to pace game progress and Pokémon Sleep is no exception. Wild Pokémon, once befriended (i.e. caught) after a sleep session, roll a considerable amount of stats that will impact their future performance.

Different Natures, for example, have different effects on how fast your team will gather resources, how much energy they will recover from each session, how much experience they will receive and so on.

In addition to Natures, 6 passive Sub Skills are randomly picked which will also affect how a Pokémon will perform, prioritising berries or ingredients, using its main skill more often and many other effects, each unlockable with level progression. Some Sub Skills are rarer than others and will show up as blue/silver or gold-coloured.

Despite the simple concept and charming design, the game has a surprising amount of depth and the game loop requires a substantial amount of luck which will affect how fast you can progress. If you wanted to go on a deep-dive through the game’s current ‘meta’, this spreadsheet (by u/drake8thecake) contains all you could possibly want to know about Pokémon Sleep stats and tier lists.

The fact that Main Skills are fixed for each species (and that some Main Skills are currently more useful than others) means that some Pokémon species tend to be more efficient. However, this being primarily a non-competitive sleep tracking game, you are generally better off taking your time with the game and enjoying the help of your favourite Pokémon.

The Game Loop

With that said, it seems unclear to me whether Pokémon Sleep wants to market itself as a sleep tracker or a game.

The promotion for the app has focused on the gamification of sleep. The limited sleep tracking features seem to point to the fact that Pokémon Sleep should have more to it than simply tracking your sleep. This is exacerbated by the fact that the app takes quite the toll on your smartphone in order to act as a sleep tracker, with your only alternative being the fairly expensive Pokémon GO Plus+. As pointed out by many players as well, the app’s premium features cost a hefty £7.99/month (€9.99/$9.99) which is almost double the average cost for most sleep trackers.

You would think that this is compensated by offering more gameplay features such as optional minigames or Tamagotchi-style caring responsibilities, but there is little you can do beyond your research opportunities right after a sleep session. You can feed Snorlax three times a day and collect berries and ingredients from your helpers, but these activities will not take more than 5-10 extra minutes a day to complete. This is not a problem per se, but the cost for the premium pass becomes harder to justify under these conditions.

All that leaves to most players (beyond an opportunity for more sleep!) is building their team in a way that maximises efficiency to progress to higher research levels. However, game progression feels quite slow (and at times frustrating), in a way that is surprisingly reminiscent of early Pokémon GO days.

Biscuits and Candy

For the purposes of this article we will focus on the free-to-play experience, though the game (in addition to the pricey subscription) does not shy away from the questionable-but-popular model of multiple in-app currencies and a series of truly astronomical purchasable item bundles.

In order to befriend a Pokémon after a sleep session, you need to feed them a certain amount of biscuits to befriend them. The amount of biscuits needed varies across the board, with unevolved Pokémon requiring a minimum of 5 hearts in order to join your team (this amount increases drastically when it comes to evolved or rare Pokémon).

As a free-to-play user, you have access to one Premium Biscuit each day which gives any Pokémon 3 hearts. More elusive resources, Poké Biscuits and Great Biscuits, give respectively 1 and 3 hearts. Poké Biscuits and Great Biscuits are surprisingly hard to come by and you are only able to purchase 30 Poké Biscuits per month from the shop (at considerable cost!).

As a free-to-play user, I usually get to befriend, on average, one Pokémon every other day. The problem being, with individual skills and natures being random, more often than not you will befriend a Pokémon that will be of little use towards your game progression.

This would be completely fine if resources to level up or evolve your Pokémon were easy to come by. However, things like candy to level up your team can be hard to acquire (though there are things that will make it easier, like having a generous friendship list). It can take one to two months of daily commitment to save up enough to evolve even just one or two of your helpers.

Conclusion

Pokémon Sleep has become part of my daily routine and I find it an incredibly charming game that completely captures the spirit of the franchise. I love nicknaming my helpers and checking in on them throughout the day.

While the game is to be played like a marathon, thinking about the long game, it feels like some aspects of the game actively obstruct your opportunities to progress, perhaps to artificially extend the game’s lifespan or persuade you to get the premium pass (or worse, one of the shamelessly expensive item bundles).

The developing team have fixed most of the major bugs that users experienced at launch and have promised new features such as auto energy recovery for Pokémon stored in the box.

Interestingly, game patches have come with generous free item bundles that (at least for me as a free-to-play user) have been the most consistent way to gather hard-to-get items like Poké Biscuits.

It feels like the game still has some way to go in figuring out its pace and objectives, but it is a welcome addition to my routine and yet another opportunity to come up with silly nicknames for my adorable team members.