Feels like they took the "game" part too far. Why's there lengthy tutorials of generic mobile game mechanics in a fucking sleep tracker? At least a portion of real casual consumers wouldn't use this at all based on that alone, but as a sleep tracker it also doesn't have a dynamic alarm clock or various soundscapes to help you sleep like other apps do. They announced this was coming like 4 years ago, how was this what they launched with? Boggles the mind quite frankly.

But gamefying various real life tasks keeps me alive so, they got me.

sleep battle pass is insane

EDIT: 7/27/23
Played every day since release for around a week or so before taking a step back and saying to myself "Why am I doing this?"
I don't need a sleep tracker because my CPAP machine does that already, and it's not really fun as a game. I liked collecting the pokémon at first, but you quickly realize there's not much point in doing so. You can't battle them or anything, and the only difference in them is the type of ingredients and berries they collect, and their skills. Neither of which really matter that much. I also found myself checking it way too often than I'd like, once at each meal time to feed Snorlax, throughout the day some to collect berries and level up pokémon, at night to track sleep, and then in the morning to catch pokémon. The morning routine is simply too long, I feel. As someone who has a job to go to in the morning, I don't really want to spend what time I have in the morning going through a bunch of menus just for the chance of catching a pokémon! The monetization is pretty aggressive too, you can only realistically get one pokémon a day if you're not paying anything, and that's if you're lucky. Locking the diary function behind a $12 a month Sleep BattlePass™️ is absurd. All in all, I don't really get the point of it. It's certainly not the best sleep tracker out there, and it's definitely not the most engaging as a video game. If you want a Pokémon mobile game, there are a few others that are at least somewhat more engaging. To be fair, though, I really don't know what else they could have done with this concept. Tracking sleep and playing video games don't really mix. Perhaps one day far in the future we can all hook ourselves up to some machine that will let us catch and battle Pokémon in our dreams, but that time is not now.

game SUCKS i go to BED

In typical Game Freak fashion, this is technology from a decade ago being paraded around like it's cool when it's Pokemon. Accelerometers tracking your movement in the night certainly works as a means of tracking sleep, but integration with wrist trackers, smartwatches, and smart rings (and AI beds? Whatever that even means?) have allowed a greater degree of fidelity for users. Sleep as Android has been doing a damn good job of telling me I have horrible sleep hygiene for a decade, only improving with time. It has recommended ways of improving my sleep, alarms that go off only when I'm in a light sleep cycle so I'm less groggy, 'captchas' were I can only turn off my increasingly loud alarm with math, or tapping an NFC point, or shaking my phone like it owes me money. Not only am I firmly entrenched in my current sleep tracker, it has always been frictionless. I tap a widget, I put my phone beside me, I sleep.

Pokemon Sleep shows a fundamental misunderstanding of why sleep trackers are used, how they are presently used, where the market lies, and how the gamification of life actually works. This isn't Habitica or Fabulous trying to improve your life through things you don't already do. I have no choice in whether or not I sleep. The appeal of a sleep tracker is that it is set and forget, a companion for something I have to and will do anyways, so it better not be an annoying partner. If Pokemon Sleep wants the user to be concerned about the quality of their sleep, shouldn't it be able to sync up with existing hardware that can supplement its readings? If sleep is meant to be restorative, why is that rejuvenation immediately undone by tutorialisation and currencies and systems and a goddamn battle pass when I wake up? Why am I chastised when I wake that I only got 54/100 sleep points because I woke in the night and can only get 5-6 hours of sleep a night if I'm lucky? Why is the assumption that 8.5 hours of sleep is a perfect ideal for everyone to aim for? Why is there no accommodation for the peculiarities of the human sleep experience, for the insomniac, the narcoleptic, the medicated? The very least it could do is offer a sleep quiz, or a calibration period. The very least it could do is not inundate me with things I have to learn and keep in mind. The very least it could do is not make my phone radiate enough heat that my wrist tracker thinks something is wrong. The very least it could do is not eat 80%(!!!) of my battery at night so I panic when I wake up. And for the chronically eepy like me, the bare minimum amount of effort could be put towards not having a minutes-long load-screen before I can track my sleep. Last night I passed out waiting for it to complete. Y'know what it took for my wrist tracker to document my sleep last night? Nothing.

Had a nightmare the first night I tried this. Still got a Bulbasaur the next morning, which was kinda neat. Funny idea this game, but it asks for too much time.. the systems are a bit convoluted and the tutorial dialogues drag out. It also kind of gives your phone too much of a workout. As far as sleep tracking accuracy goes? There are better options, albeit less gamified. Also, this game weirdly stipulates that "8.5 hours" is the ideal sleep length for a young adult... and this is needed for maximum "points" on a given night, which is strange. Overall, this is an odd package that would have ironically benefited from being more simple.

Definitely a thing where they came up with the idea of having a sleep tracking app first and then had to sloppily build a game around that idea. Mechanics are just sort of thrown at you, with no attempt at telling you why you should bother doing any of this besides "maybe we'll tell you if you sleep funny after all this busy work". Also, this game has some glitch with me where the sound doesn't work if I don't have headphones, and for some reason that results in the alarm being comically quiet, so it can't even do the basic function of waking me up. Chikorita was there, that was nice I guess.

Sleep tracking app but Pokémon-themed.
Gameplay: It is an actual interactive experience since sleeping in real life is required to progress. Serviceable.
Graphics/Soundtrack: Less is better. This is the kind of experience where the balance between presentation and gameplay is easy to miss. Pokémon sleep got this right.
Overall, it is sleep tracking app with pokémon. One may dislike in-game transaction or allowing personal data such as sleeping monitoration to be disclosed as much.
I can only say this game does what main line pokémon is too afraid to do, not ironically