Pokémon players have their expectations way up in the clouds for new mobile game Pokemon Sleep, but they might want to go back to bed when they realize just how monotonous and draining the game can be. Not only on your sanity but your bank account if you aren’t careful—it’s exhausting me.
At its core, Pokémon Sleep is simple. When you go to bed, it monitors how you sleep so that when you wake up, you come across a bunch of Pokémon you can catch. This allows you to level up your buddy Snorlax through the items and skills they provide. This helps you find and unlock rarer Pokémon down the line. Why? I don’t know. Maybe the smaller critters feel safe snoozing next to the big guy. All I know is I gotta catch ‘em all.
Sleep rewards you for sleeping at consistent times and having a good rest—or at least, it should. In truth, the gameplay loop is not only stale, repetitive, and lackluster, but almost predatory in its monetization practices.
First, you require items called Biscuits to catch Pokémon to add to your party after waking up, but the likelihood of you having enough available, or any Biscuits at all, without spending real-world currency is obscenely low. Like everything in Sleep, you only get these after a night’s rest. I have woken up twice these past few days to a bunch of Pokémon I would have loved to collect, only to find out I didn’t have enough Biscuits to get even one, forcing me to wait another 24 hours and another long sleep at the off chance they return—well, if the game even gives me enough resources by the following morning to get a Biscuit.
This creates a tedious gameplay loop of sleeping to gain small bits of in-game currency to buy a Biscuit or two (you require five Poké Biscuits to unlock a Pokémon, by the way), waking up in hopes the ‘mon you want is there, and rinse and repeat.
This whole process is slow, unrewarding, and bothersome. There is no payoff, and it feels like Sleep is designed to force players to spend real money to get Biscuits from the in-game store. Otherwise, at the current rate, it could take you an entire week of sleep to finally catch (or at least find) a Pokémon you actually want if you play for free. Instead of feeling like my sleep is being rewarded, I wake up to look at my phone, feeling disappointed every morning, the first thought on my mind being, “why am I even bothering to play this?”
Each morning I get more tempted to sink money into Sleep to get the Biscuits I need straight away. To pay for items to help level up my Snorlax faster to get more Pokémon to appear. To actually feel like I’m enjoying the game. God forbid I come across a Shiny Pokémon and have no choice but to pay money to get the Biscuits I need to capture it before it can run away. Sleep shouldn’t be locked behind a paywall.
It’s not just catching Pokémon that is down to lady luck, either. Increasing your research level and unlocking new features all come down to the chance of finding a Pokémon you need for your Sleep Style Pokédex. One of the main forms of progression comes from finding ‘mons that sleep in different ways. Finding these different sleeping critters is a requirement for unlocking new features, such as the ability to level up your Pokémon or to manually create specific recipes for Snorlax. You need to find seven or so unique sleeping styles over the course of many mornings to level up, so color me surprised when one day, I woke up to the sight of three Pichu (adorable) all sleeping the exact same way (infuriating). Eight hours of sleep for the same Pokémon, in the same Sleep Style, setting back any progress I was looking to have that day when I woke up. Guess I better get lucky tomorrow, right?
It is just a slog. Pokémon Sleep is a slow mess of a game that is a fun premise in theory but is poorly executed so far. The rewards for playing Sleep feel non-existent currently, and it’s putting me off playing more before it’s even truly begun.
Ironically, Sleep makes me feel more tired than ever and has me wanting to go back to bed. If more rest was the idea, Sleep succeeded—perhaps not in the way it was hoping for, though.
