It's a cute idea but in practice it just doesn't work. For an app that's all about tracking sleep it bloats itself with lots of mobile game junk. Lots of items, bonuses, currencies and things I quite honestly skipped through. For context I have a unique sleep schedule. I take hour long naps alongside my full night's sleep. The app is intended to work by having you place your phone face down and charging next to you in bed. It's supposed to use the phone's hardware to track how you sleep which it generally does however unlike a proper sleep tracker the game is VERY picky on what it counts. For one of the sessions the game recorded barely 5 hours. (I was asleep for longer but as a somewhat restless sleeper it seemed as though the app counted that movement as me being awake) Going back to me taking naps however that's what I really wanted to use this for. Log an hour and have some fun. However the app requires a 90 minute minimum sleep session and it is very specific about it. I'm not sure how it determines the 90 minutes but I've left this thing running for much longer than that and it still claims I haven't met the minimum. At this point I'm left to ignore the intention and just leave it on my nightstand. Sucks all the fun out of "attracting Pokemon with sleep styles similar to your own" when now all my future sessions will just have me perfectly asleep like a rock for exactly an hour and a half. At this point I think I'm better served just falling asleep to the music of classic Pokemon than continue with this app.

Similar to the Wii Vitality Sensor, Pokémon Sleep became a meme for presenting a silly premise in the nintendo realm and then disappearing without a trace for multiple years.

But, some memes die hard and Pokémon Sleep finally got out of bed to say "I lived" and came out.

I could immediately tell it was made by the Magikarp Jump team from the art style and frankly the predatory strategy of encouraging kids and adults to become a money whale to just get these sleeping creatures to evolve and be healthy.

It was a decent time for awhile seeing some of the creative sleeping animations for several of the cute monsters when I got out of bed, but the glitchyness of the interface booting me out (and eventually not logging my sleep at all one night) and the difficulty managing more than 6 Pokémon started to annoy me as the weeks past.

For now on I'm gonna stay up as late as I want now

It’s basically a combination idle game and sleep tracker. Is it good at what it does? Well, I am trying to be more conscious about my habits at least, and it is nice to have some silly bullshit to do to help me wake up in the morning. It’s definitely based on a “one size fits all” kind of mentality, though.

The microtransactions are definitely kind of whack though lmao. I hear that sleep apps generally have some kind of subscription fee but I never really looked into them before so I don’t know how this compares on that front, but “you can buy extra diamonds!” is truly bizarre.

I can’t really say anything too bad about the experience proper though. Like I said it’s an idle game that’s not too different from Select Button’s last mobile Pokemon outing, Magikarp Jump. The main gameplay loop boils down to selecting a team of Pokemon that will collect the best berries and ingredients to power up your Snorlax and attract more sleeping pokemon to observe and try to befriend, which isn’t thrilling by any means but as something to do to keep your hands busy? It’s alright. Plus it’s just really cute and it does some interesting things, like how the Totodile line’s most common pattern is Actual Gator Facts. Plus there is no actual failure state short of maybe the game giving you a bad grade in sleep, but listen, buddy, I know. You still rewarded me with cute Pokemon though so I can’t really give much of a fuck.

Anyway I hope they keep supporting it instead of this being It. I wanna see Maushold.

EDIT: also damn after the first area the music is weirdly good as hell, the beach and the hollow have some excellent tunes

rating this is weird, but i use it almost daily and like having the stats it provides. yes, you can just use a fitbit or whatever other watch, but as someone who cannot afford that kind of luxury, i like pokemon sleep! i charge my phone through the day, and let it stay unplugged at night and use it as an alarm. this has actually HELPED my sleep schedule, crazy enough, and i get cute little friends when i wake up.

my only grievance is that... well, when i wake up, i am bombarded by things to do. i've started ending my sleep tracking, and then not moving past that screen until i get up fully because looking at my phone hurts my eyes that early. wish the whole "taking photos" or "meals" systems were more streamlined & instant so i'm not forced to swipe on my phone right as i get up.

Lowest possible score for actively making my life worse. Manufactured discontent disguised as a wellness app.

I do really like when pokemon get act like real animals, and not just buckets of numbers. The sleep animations are cute and creative! But wow, does that not make up for how intrusive and unenjoyable this app is.

First, I'm not interested in logging into my sleep tracker three times a day minimum. Sorry Snorlax, cook your own meals.

Second, they way overshot how bad this feels without the premium sub. I think they specifically tuned the catching math to upset me personally. Basic pokemon need 5 points, the free biscuit gives 3, a pokeball biscuit gives 1, and an expensive limited quantity great biscuit gives 3. But it seems like most pokemon get full after two feedings. So your choices are to catch nothing, use the more expensive biscuit, or shell out $9.99/month for premium, which makes the free one worth 4 points. Wheee, so fun. Love to play a pokemon game that makes catching pokemon unpleasant.

This is definitely interesting, and for a mobile app it tracks sleep surprisingly well. It does the job, but I believe it falls short as a game and suffers from the same issues as Magikarp Jump, which was developed by the same studio: very repetitive gameplay, uncomfortable menuing and poor automatic grinding. I still use it as a sleep tracker because it works really well as that, and seeing what Pokémon I've caught by the end of the night is always a fun moment (at least for now), but I can't say I'm really into the rest of the game.

For an app that promotes and prioritizes getting as much sleep as possible, there sure is an awful lot of text, tutorials, unskippable animations, and manual item collection to do. You can't change your set bedtime unless you don't mind having your weekly streak reset (???), there's convoluted skills and happiness meters for each pokemon, and the app has the gall to implement a BATTLE PASS. Having the app open while the phone is charging on your bed next to you is already pushing it, I'm truly only hanging onto this app by a thread.

The only intuitive feature keeping me from deleting the app completely is the smart alarm which is able to wake me up during lighter sleep periods - a feature that already exists basically everywhere except on Apple's shitty default clock app. That, and I just want to see my little Cubone evolve. The animations are nice I guess, but it seems like Pokemon Sleep has no idea what actually compels people to get adequate rest.