Pokémon Sleep - A Sleeper Hit?
07-07-2023 13:00 UTC by Joe Merrick (Serebii).
Announced in 2019, Pokémon Sleep has always been a bit of a mystery in Pokémon circles and after almost 4 years of silence, the game is finally coming out. The Pokémon Company International were kind enough to invite us to a special Pokémon Sleep Slumber Party in order to get a decent look at the game and find out what it truly is and how it actually works.
We were given the phone in the evening and told to play through the tutorial and then go to bed to see how the game is, and to my surprise, there is actually a decent amount to this game, more than just tracking the sleep tracking.
Premise
The game starts with Professor Neroli introducing you to the world of sleep and explains that he is working to record the Pokémon as they sleep to delve into their sleeping habits and your job is to help him with his research by tracking your sleep and synchronising it with Snorlax's in order to help explore the world of Pokémon Sleep.
Tracking of Sleep
So just how did it track the sleep? There are two ways, either with the phone or with the Pokémon GO Plus + peripheral which is releasing this month. For the purposes of the preview, we went with the native phone element rather than the GO Plus +. At any point in the game you can go into the sleep mode and you have the ability to set an alarm to sleep to, and even have some relaxing sounds play if you need some white noise while you sleep. From there, we just turned the phone over, plugged in, and put it on the bed, not on a bedside table, so that it can detect movement.
In the morning, when it was time to wake up, you simply turn the phone over and press the End Sleep button and it will track that night's sleep, showing you a graph and various elements.
As with other sleep trackers, the game will register your sleep in three ways: Dozing, Snoozing and Slumbering which replace the Awake, REM and Core of other sleep trackers and this also helps determine the Pokémon you see. The style of sleep you are predominantly using determines the style of Pokémon you will find and this is also compared with previous sleep cycles to change things up if your sleep pattern changes. The game tracks the time in each of these three elements, as well as the time it takes for you to fall asleep and all of this is calculated into a Sleep Score.
In my preview, I had an apparently abnormally large amount of Slumbering in a row, even to the point half an hour of my sleep was unregistered because I was so still and silent, which is honestly a surprise to me.
After it all goes through your Drowsy Power is calculated based on Snorlax's strength multiplied by your sleep score, and the higher it is, the more Pokémon you will find.
The app also, if you use the mobile version and not the Pokémon GO Plus + to track sleep, will have some recordings while you sleep to pick up on any audio abnormalities. For me this only picked up a cough, a loud door slam and my alarm on my phone to wake me up in the morning but it could be used for other reasons. It also has a graph showing the amount of decibels of sound it picked up in the sleep duration. If you use the Pokémon GO Plus + for it however, we have been told that there is no microphone and it will only pick up sleep data based on your movement.
Gameplay
The gameplay is fairly simple and this is an incredibly passive game. At the start of each week, you will get a new Snorlax and your task throughout the week is to raise the Snorlax, helping it grow and boosting its Drowsy Power. The more that the Snorlax grows, the more varied the Pokémon it can attract. To help it grow, you need help from various Pokémon.
In the build we played, there was over 100 Pokémon capable of being found, and each Pokémon has at least 3 different styles of sleep with different star ratings to indicate their rarity; The better quality of sleep and the higher Snorlax's Drowsy Power, the better the chances of finding the rare sleep styles.
In our preview, we managed to find two different Riolu styles of sleep as well as a Squirtle, a Pichu and a Sudowooodo. The three different sleeping styles will determine the Pokémon you find as well. As we were Slumbering, we were set to find more Water and Ground-type.
Cycles
There are basically three different elements of the game in daytime cycles. The first is the Night Mode where you can't do too much but can set your Pokémon to sleep, but the more gameplay elements come with the Morning and Afternoon parts of the cycle.
In the morning, you will be able to find the various Pokémon, and you can even recruit them by offering them Poké Biscuits and they are then used to help Snorlax grow in the Afternoon cycle.
The Helper Pokémon all have their own natures and special effects in finding certain items. These items are mostly ingredients that can be used to make meals for the Snorlax. You can give Snorlax 3 big meals each day, while it will also snack on berries throughout the day. Like Snorlax, these meals have a level that can increase and each Snorlax you get each week will have different tastes making you have to change things up with different Pokémon. You can either set it to auto create them or you can make your own by individually selecting ingredients.
Each Pokémon has specific ingredients it will pick up and a set time it takes to pick items up, such as say an hour, with a limit to how many items they can hold at once. To get the items you will just tap the Pokémon and it will drop them on the floor.
Like in the main series games, each Nature will increase one element while decrease another so building a diverse team of helpers will really help you grow the Snorlax to help you find a variety of Pokémon.
The Helper Pokémon can even be levelled up. This is done by feeding them various items, mostly Poké Biscuits. There is a cap of Level 100 as per most Pokémon games, and as you hit certain levels you will unlock subskills to get boosts. The Pokémon can also even evolve, like Pokémon GO this is done by using Species Candy and items like the Thunder Stone, Linking Cord etc. should that species require it in the main series titles. The Helpers do however get tired themselves and will need a boost as time goes on.
We didn't get much of a chance to level the Pokémon up and had only a Level 5 Pikachu and a newly obtained Level 1 Squirtle, but just in the time we had, they brought a lot of items that helped our Snorlax to grow and it was a constant addition of them so if you have a full helper team, I don't think it'll be that much of an issue
You can also change your various camp features with different camp and incense which have special effects that affect both Snorlax and your own Pokémon, but we were unable to test this feature.
Monetisation?
Pokémon Sleep is of course a free to play mobile game and so like almost all of them, it has a monetisation aspect. We were told this is all subject to change but we had a quick delve in to see what sort of monetisation there is.
While the game has you accrue Sleep Points while sleeping which can be exchanged for some items, there is also a paid currency of diamonds that can be used to exchange for different items, even more powerful ones.
There's also a Premium Pass that you can buy on a subscription style which provides a variety of special bonuses including keeping unlimited sleep data (rather than just the last 30 days), improved item gifts, a different item exchange for rarer items and more.
None of this feels particularly egregious or moneygrabby at the time of writing and doesn't feel like it makes the game too pay-to-win but there definitely does look like there will be incentive to put money in.
Pokémon GO Plus +
Even though we didn't get the chance to use it for the game, we did get a look at the Pokémon GO Plus +. With this, we got to learn some of the more interesting elements. First, the Pikachu in it can be used in Pokémon Sleep as a Helper Pokémon when you connect the GO Plus + to the game, giving you a Pikachu in a night cap. It will also keep track of spinning Pok€Stops in Pokémon GO and give you berries in Pokémon Sleep next time you connect it.
We also got a bit of details on how Pokémon GO reacts to it. In addition to the use for spinning Poké Stops and catching Pokémon, Pokémon GO will be able to read your Sleep Data which is stored on the game. Doing so will give you some rewards in Pokémon GO including Stardust, Stickers and even a heart for your current buddy Pokémon, but we have been told this is of course subject to change until it is live in the game.
Conclusion
All in all, Pokémon Sleep on our first look has so much more to it than I even thought possible. There's just so much depth to the game that I don't think I could even properly get into during the time I had with the game, it honestly stunned me with the scope involved.
It has the same visual flair that the developers, Select Button, put through their previous game Magikarp Jump, it has a very nice atmosphere in general.
It's definitely not a game you're going to be able to speed run or min/max, and I do fear that by having the three cycles of gameplay in a day and needing to feed the Snorlax and work with your helpers that it could end up feeling like you have a bit of busywork to do each day, but the game we have tried has definitely got me wanting to try it more.
This worry also falls into the Pokémon you can get. If your sleep patterns are largely the same day to day, and while you can get a different set of Pokémon if you have say 30% more dozing time during your sleep session than usual, if you are more consistent with your sleep then I do wonder how hard or easy it'd be to get the full Sleep Style Dex complete.
Even the next day, while speaking to others who attended the preview, we were in agreement that we wanted the game again the next night to just see what more there is to find, and it will definitely take months and months for people to truly get to the full collections in the game.
Don't sleep on this game, there seems to be a lot of fun to be had.
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