You might have heard of Pokemon GO, but have you heard of Pokemon Sleep? Pokemon Sleep is an app developed by Sleep Button Inc. Also famous for its other Pokemon game – Pokemon: Magikarp Jump!

In Pokemon GO, players are encouraged to practice a healthy lifestyle by taking a walk in the recreation area, where most Pokemon can be found. Pokemon Sleep, on the other hand, suggested by its name – encourages people to improve their sleep quality.

Hence: The higher the sleep quality, the higher the Pokemon rarity.

Sleep Tracking Technology

I believe Pokemon Sleep is not the first application that uses the sleep tracking technology to improve lifestyle. However, I affirmatively think that this game is at least making the hard routine interesting – which is to sleep healthily. 

Let’s be honest, whether you’re a student, a homebody, or a worker, we tend to seek an act of revenge unconsciously. It’s psychological. When your body and mind are so tired from working, it makes you think that you deserve to sleep late to compensate for the me-time that you’d lost during the day. You might be wondering, how does your phone track your sleeping pattern if what you need to do is just place the phone next to your pillow? And how accurate is the monitoring?

Most smartphones have built-in accelerometers and gyroscopes that can detect movement and orientation changes. When placed near you while sleeping, these sensors can analyze your movements during the night to estimate your sleep cycles and patterns.

Of course, the accuracy of phone sleep tracking can vary based on several factors, including the smartphone model, the sensors it incorporates, the algorithms used by sleep-tracking apps, and individual user habits. To conclude, the more you use your sleep tracker app – in this case, Pokemon Sleep game, the more accurate your sleep tracking data is.

** It’s essential to understand that phone sleep tracking is generally considered a convenient tool for personal insights rather than a medical-grade device. For clinical-level accuracy, polysomnography conducted in a sleep laboratory is the gold standard.

How The Game Commence

It is rather easy to collect your Pokemon. Whenever you are ready to sleep, you can click on the sleep mode and place your phone right next to your pillow. It is to put it next to your pillow – not under your pillow. Your phone works best in detecting your movements, sounds, and other sensors.

Oh my god! That’s a lot of battery use! – you may frown and complain.

Pokemon Sleep has a feature where if you put your phone face down while sleeping, the game itself will go into sleep mode and run in the background in power-saving mode. While you may notice the difference in battery percentage when you’re not using the app, it doesn’t have that much of a difference. Unless your phone battery health is poor beforehand.

You may sleep how many times you like in a day and can still use the game to track them multiple times a day – on the condition, that your sleep must be more than 90 minutes.

Sleep Records

Be patient, I’ll get into how this relates to capturing your Pokemon.

Referring to the picture above;

The LEFT picture shows my sleep pattern on March 2. The MIDDLE picture shows my sleep pattern on March 3. The game will categorize your pattern into 3 modes – Dozing (half-awake), Snoozing (light sleep), and Slumbering (deep sleep). The RIGHT picture shows the overall data of my sleep. I slept better on March 2 compared with March 3 – I wonder why… Anyway, you can always go back and see your sleep report.

Higher Sleep Quality, Higher Pokemon Rarity

The important part is your sleep score and Snorlax‘s sleep strength (which is the game’s main method that will attract other Pokemon to come) will come hand in hand. 

For instance, if Snorlax’s strength is full before you go to sleep, you will receive extra points on top of your sleep score. Because while you are sleeping, Snorlax will use his strength to attract other Pokemon to come sleeping next to him. That’s how you catch the Pokemon.

The MIDDLE and RIGHT picture shows how Snorlax Strength x Sleep Score = Drowsy Power. So, the higher your Drowsy Power, the rarer Pokemon caught. I caught a Charmander on my better sleep score and a total of 5 Pokemon compared to only Psyduck on my worse sleep with a total of only 3 Pokemon.

How to Increase Snorlax Strength

As I mentioned previously, your Drowsy Power also depends on Snorlax’s strength. Like in the anime, Snorlax loves to sleep as deep as it loves to eat. So, to increase his strength, you need to feed him!

Snorlax eats 3 times daily. Breakfast (6.00AM – 11.59AM), Lunch (12.00PM – 5.59PM), and Dinner (6.00PM – 5.59AM). You need to cook for him within those 3-time frames. 

Every week, you will get a new Snorlax, and each Snorlax has different food preferences. Some love rice, some love salads, some love desserts. For each week, you need to guess the ingredients for food that it like. This is where it becomes more exciting, apart from collecting Pokemon, you also need to collect recipes by trying different combinations of ingredients.

How to Obtain Ingredients to Cook

By default, you will get a Pikachu as your helper to collect fruits for Snorlax to snack on while waiting for you to cook. After some time, you will get more helpers aside from Pikachu assigned from the Pokemon you’ve caught during your sleep. Each Pokemon has its unique fruits AND INGREDIENTS. However, not all Pokemon will collect ingredients.

Hence, it’s important to set your team of helpers based on what you want. The RIGHT picture above shows that you have 6 teams to form. Maximum 5 Pokemon per team.

The LEFT picture shows Psyduck dropping some berries, while the MIDDLE picture shows that Pikachu collected different types of berries. Charmander, our love, drops some sausages which is one of the ingredients needed to cook.

How to Use Boosters

Of course, you cannot forget that you can use incense to attract Pokemon in Pokemon GO. In Pokemon Sleep, you can use incense as well. Just put it beforehand by clicking the incense stand near your tent (the LEFT picture) and add 1 or 2 incense (the MIDDLE picture). They will be activated once you are in the sleep mode.

You can purchase your incense in the General Store. The currency (diamonds) will be acquired every time you register a new Pokemon and each time you complete a sleep report.

Evolve Pokemon for More Ingredients

You don’t want your Charmander to remain a Charmander, right? You need to evolve your Pokemon for higher stats and more ingredient varieties.

It all then contributes to your cooking which contributes to Snorlax’s Strength, and then contributes to the total of your Drowsy Power, ultimately contributing to rarer Pokemon.

Easy? Easy.

Sleep Style Dex instead of Poke Dex

Sleep Style Dex is the Poke Dex of Pokemon Sleep. The twist of this game is, that you will collect Pokemon with their sleeping styles (notice I said styleS?). This is because 1 Pokemon may have 2 to 3 sleeping styles. So, even if you meet 2 of the same Pokemon, if they have different sleeping styles, it is considered as 2 new findings.

In the Sleep Records part, I mentioned that there are 3 sleeping styles; Dozing, Snoozing, and Slumbering. The Pokemon you will attract is based on the overall style of your sleeping that day. Based on my experience, Slumbering styles Pokemon are mostly better – well, because it’s hard to achieve a slumber sleep, at least for me.

Conclusion

I’ve been playing this game since March 2 and at first, it was exciting to see how I sleep, now it’s becoming part of my crucial routine. 

For all I know I’ve been sleeping okay and never take to improve the quality into consideration. Only after I tried Pokemon Sleep for almost a week, did I start to realize how bad my sleep was. Sometimes I just sleep for 4 hours a day and I become aware that on those particular days, I was more exhausted and cranky than the days I slept well. Also, it makes a significant difference whether I sleep on my bed in a dark room or on my couch.

So, what can Pokemon Sleep do to improve my sleep quality? None. The game is simply a tool for me to track and realize how my sleep pattern which is VERY important because I will not track my sleep otherwise. In the end, it’s all up to me to take my sleeping quality seriously or not.

There are so many sleep-tracking apps out there but all of them are the same old same old. Most of them ended up requiring users to make an in-app purchase to unlock proper features. Pokemon Sleep also has an in-app purchase, but only if you want to buy boosters, which in my opinion, is not necessary. In a nutshell, it’s all free! Collecting and feeding Pokemon are bonuses. It makes the sleep quality improvisation journey fun. Who doesn’t love Pokemon?

Last but definitely not least, if you would like to read my other posts, I mostly write about Anime (one more reason why I play this game), so you can head there! Until then, MATA NEE!