Can Pokemon Sleep really help you sleep more? I tried it out for 4 weeks
Can Pokemon Sleep really help you sleep more? I tried it out for 4 weeks
Well, you do advance in the game by hitting the sack early. But do you end up sleeping more? And can you cheat?
Welcome to Pokemon Sleep, the only game where you snooze to play. (Screen grabs: Pokemon Sleep)
Pikachu sounds like Ryan Reynolds in my mind, thanks to the snippets of Pokemon: Detective Pikachu I caught on the plane before I drifted off to Lalaland. So you can't blame me for expecting a sultry-voiced Deadpool to give me a wake-up call when I tried using Pokemon Sleep.
No such luck though. Basically, the app works like a gamified sleep tracker; each morning, you’ll receive a report on how you slept (did you doze, snooze or slumber?), including a brief audio recording in case, I suppose, you wanted to know if you snored.
Does Pokemon Sleep actually help you sleep more? I tried it out for four weeks and here's how it turned out.
HOW DO YOU USE IT?
The wonderful thing about the app is, there are no fiddly controls to adapt to, no VR headsets required. Just get into bed and sleep. And oh, not forgetting to place your handphone face down next to your pillow before you turn off the lights. I promise that's not my OCD talking but a tech thing; placing your phone elsewhere will affect the sounds your handphone picks up and mess up your sleep record.
I read that Pokemon Sleep is pretty much like the other Pokemon games, which means the plot centres around research. This time, it's about helping a rumpled Professor Neroli (aptly named after the sleep-promoting essential oil) with his studies on Pokemon sleep habits.
You’re assigned a Snorlax and location, and tasked to study the creatures that come to nap next to it. Plus, you get Pikachu, everyone's favourite Pokemon, to help you out – without Reynolds' voice.
The longer you sleep, the more Pokemons your Snorlax will attract for you to study and note on your Sleep Style Dex. You could wake up to an Eevee with adorable droopy ears nodding to sleep on its feet or a Diglett slumbering under a pile of rocks. I had a Psyduck once, sprawled on its belly, finally headache-free. The morning I found a Cubone weeping and dreaming of its dead mother in its sleep, I almost didn’t want to get out of bed.
There were also many other less familiar (at least to me) but fascinating helpers that made me wish I dreamed in the Pokemon world. There were the Ultraman-like Toxicroak, the Wobbuffet with a tail-hiding complex and what looked like an assembly of floating metal bits known as Magnemite.
When the bizarre Slowbro, with a parasitic Shellder clinging to its tail, showed up next to my Snorlax, I wasn’t sure what to make of the situation. Separate them? Feed them?
Speaking of feeding, you can give the very food-motivated critters Poke Biscuits to befriend them. Feed them enough and they’ll join your team and help you out by collecting berries and ingredients to feed and cook for Snorlax.
The better fed your Snorlax is, the more Pokemons it’ll attract – and the cycle repeats itself as you gain experience points, creature friends and hopefully, more sleep.
THE BIG QUESTION: DOES IT HELP YOU SLEEP MORE?
Sleep is how you earn Sleep Points to exchange for those Poke Biscuits (you'll receive a free biscuit every morning but it's hardly enough), along with other Pokemon Sleep paraphernalia such as incense, energy pillows, a bigger cooking pot to cook up high-value dishes and special stones to help your Pokemons evolve.
They did make pretty good motivation though – at least for me initially – to clock as close to 8.5 hours of sleep as possible each night to earn the maximum 100 points. Naps also count towards your daily sleep quota but the catch is, you have to nap at least 1.5 hours. Who takes such long siestas?
On the first night, I enthusiastically climbed into bed at 11pm with the aim of waking up at my usual 7am – only to lay there with eyes wide open until past 2am. It didn't help that I was constantly checking my handphone to make sure the app was not accidentally switched off and the phone hadn't fallen off the bed. That, coupled with the excitement of seeing what Pokemons I could find the next morning, got me a grand total of about five hours of sleep.
I tried again the following night and the night after. Before the first week ended, I had enough of staring up at my ceiling and reverted to my usual bedtime of past midnight, never mind the paltry points I earned.
You might be thinking: How could I pass up the chance to sleep more? To me, sleeping is like eating salads. It's healthy to eat your greens but you gotta start small and work your way up. It's the same with sleep. For someone who is used to six hours at best, eight hours are a lot to clock.
But that was before I found a hack around the sleep quota. You start the recording early in the night and leave your handphone facedown on the bed, while you carry on with whatever you need to do. I still got my Sleep Points (newbies get extra 600 points daily for a week) and the requisite free Poke Biscuit the next morning.
WHAT'S THE VERDICT?
Pokemon Sleep essentially replaced Instagram in the technological grab for my attention each morning. But after the kick I got out of discovering new Pokemons on my screen, the game is a snooze for the rest of the day. Without paying for a Premium Pass or diamonds to trade for those aforementioned goodies, I was on the slow track. Yawn.
Also, I had no idea what recipes to use to maximise the ingredients fetched by my little helpers – until I chanced upon cheat sheets like this.
No such luck though when it came to my four weeks worth of recorded sleep data. I think I am supposed to aim for a balanced mix of dozing, snoozing and slumbering each night. How I am supposed to do that, I'm not sure. There were nights when I had satisfied the full 8.5 hours of sleep – no cheating – but my sleep profile was mostly in dozing mode. I must be missing something... maybe more sleep and pay attention to the app's sleep tips?
If you love numbers, charts, progression tracking, grades and more numbers, you'll love the Sleep Consistency and Statistics functions. I'm not going to elaborate on them because Pokemon Sleep failed me – and graded me a "C" at best for my sleep efforts. Consider me triggered.
Would I recommend Pokemon Sleep? Okay, I'll play nice. The 2D graphics are cute (Pikachu nodding off is adorable). If you enjoyed late 1990s' Tamagotchi, you might take to satiating your blue rotund Pokemon's breakfast, lunch and dinner needs. But I'll sleep on it a bit more – unless the app revises my sleep grades.
