Video Game / Pokémon Sleep

Rest your very best!

Pokémon Sleep is a free-to-play mobile Idle Game and sleep tracker app in the Pokémon franchise developed by SELECT BUTTON inc., who previously developed Pokémon: Magikarp Jump, and published by The Pokemon Company for iOS and Android devices. It was originally revealed on May 19, 2019 and released on July 19th/20th, 2023, with an open beta held in select countries between July 9th and July 19th.

Pokémon Sleep revolves around an archipelago of islands inhabited by various Pokémon. Researching the islands is Professor Neroli, a Pokémon Professor who studies the sleep patterns of Pokémon, who has called upon the player to assist in his research. As it turns out, the archipelago is home to a great many Snorlax, who not only eat and sleep like beasts but also possess a peculiar power unique to these islands to draw other Pokémon to them in their sleep and put them to a good night's rest. Your mission? You Gotta Catch Them All, of course! By befriending and powering up the friendly Snorlaxes on the island, you can help Professor Neroli complete the Sleep Style Dex, a record of not only every Pokémon on the archipelago but also their sleeping habits and conditions.

The gameplay of Pokémon Sleep is split into two phases. During the awake phase, players interact with their partner Snorlax and any Pokémon they have befriended, collecting berries and ingredients and cooking dishes to boost Snorlax's Drowsy Power and increase the variety of Pokémon that Snorlax can attract. During the sleep phase, players set their phone down on their mattress and go to sleep, with the phone gathering data pertaining to the player's sleeping habits and quality of rest. After getting a sufficient amount of sleep—90 minutes minimal—the player is graded on their sleep with a Sleep Score, a numerical representation of the length and quality of the player's sleep, and Snorlax will have attracted resting Pokémon to its location. After taking pictures of the sleeping Pokémon for the Sleep Style Dex, Pokémon can be befriended by feeding them cookies to fill up their Friendship Gauge. A Pokémon will be "caught" upon fully maxing its Friendship Gauge and join your team, with each Pokémon having unique skills and abilities to collect specific berries and ingredients for Snorlax and increase Snorlax's Drowsy Power.

The game additionally features compatibility with the Pokémon GO Plus+ accessory, which can be used to record sleep data in lieu of your phone via a wireless Bluetooth connection. Linking with a Pokémon GO Plus+ for the first time rewards you with a unique Nightcap Pikachu, who has a unique Friendship mechanic and is able to customize the functions of the Pokémon GO Plus+.

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This game contains examples of:

• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Upgrading the Cooking Pot costs Dream Shards, whose price goes up with every purchase (to the point of requiring a whopping 127,000 Dream Shards in order to allow 57 ingredients to fit into your Pot).
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If you forget to perform a sleep session on a given day, you have the option to record your sleep data manually, which will still give you a small reward, such as a second Bonus Biscuit for your next actual sleep session, even though you can't get sleep research or other benefits. Premium Pass players can also gain Sleep Points as if they had completed a normal sleeping session, but to prevent obvious abuse you can only get sleep points this way once per day.
  • Shiny Pokémon can show up in the game, and they're just as rare as they are in the main series. Because of this, they'll always show up hungry and are instantly befriended after feeding them just one Biscuit, regardless of its strength.
  • A Pokémon's Friendship Gauge is carried over to its next visit, so you can continue filling it up. It's also shared among the same species if more than one visits your Camp, so if one gets full, you can continue filling up the Gauge by feeding the other. However, you can't do this to befriend more than one Pokémon at the same time, since completely filling up one species' Friendship Gauge won't do the same for the other.
  • If a Pokémon with a sleep style you already recorded appears in your camp, you can skip the recording process and have the game automatically snapshot all the already recorded Pokémon.
  • If a Pokémon's carrying capacity hits its maximum, any overflow Berries that would have been gathered will automatically be converted to Drowsy Power for Snorlax so they aren't wasted. This does not apply to Ingredients, however, so you are still required to check in every few hours to ensure you don't run low on reserves.
  • Some Pokémon who evolve by level-up have their minimum evolution levels reduced in this game. For example, Squirtle evolves into Wartortle at Lv. 12 instead of Lv. 16.
  • The amount of energy your Pokémon recovers is based on your Sleep Score for the day. The Recovery Incense doubles the amount of energy your Pokémon recovers in a sleep session, which greatly helps if you know your next sleep won't be too good. Additionally, Boxed Pokémon recover energy equivalent to 5% of your Sleep Score, allowing them to recharge bit by bit each day.
  • Certain Pokémon will appear based on your sleep style, which can be frustrating if you're looking to get specific Pokémon since you normally cannot control how you sleep. Certain events throw the player a bone by having any Pokémon show up regardless of your sleep style for the night.
  • The number of ingredients that can go in the cooking pot doubles on Sundays, allowing players who haven't unlocked higher pot levels the space to make larger recipes.
  • Originally, your Pokémon couldn’t recover energy without either a team member providing an energy boost or you giving them an Energy Pillow, which restores 50% of their energy. An update now allows your team to recover a little energy through meals you make for Snorlax. The amount of energy they gain varies depending on how much they have before the meal.
  • You can still track your sleep during maintenance, and your sleep tracking won't be interrupted if the maintenance period begins during it.
  • Originally, on the second day of a Good Sleep Day event, Snorlax's gained Drowsy Power would be multiplied by 2. This was later changed to increase the multiplier if the second event day occurred earlier in the week (4× on Monday, 3× on Tuesday, 2.5× on Wednesday) to compensate for having less time to accumulate Drowsy Power for a new Snorlax.
• Anti-Wastage Features: You can't discard Master Biscuits due to their rarity and cost — there's only one in stock every 30 days, and they cost 4,000 Sleep Points.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only have 5 Pokémon active on a team at once, not counting Nightcap Pikachu.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: By default, your team is limited to five Pokémon. Buying the Pokémon GO Plus+ accessory unlocks a sixth slot dedicated to Nightcap Pikachu, who will only appear when it has berries and/or ingredients to give you. While you can easily progress in the game without the special Pikachu, having it significantly helps out with boosting Snorlax's strength.
• Cap: The Pokémon level cap depends on your current Research Level, which increases until Lv. 55. However, the third ingredient a Pokémon can gather is unlocked at Lv. 60, hinting that this will be increased in future updates.
• Carnivore Confusion: Averted, given that the "meat" used for the recipes are all made out of beans.
• Colorful Theme Naming: Much like the main Pokémon games, the research areas have names with colors in them (Greengrass Isle, Cyan Beach, Taupe Hollow, etc).
• Comical Nap Drool: Caterpie is sometimes seen using String Shot in its sleep, making it look like it's drooling. Also with certain Poison-type Pokémon like Bellsprout, and Slowbro even have a sleep style titled "Drooling Sleep".
• Cooking Mechanics: After choosing your ingredients, you can cook a dish for Snorlax, which grants an immediate boost in Drowsy Power and is more efficient than Berries. This takes the form of a cooking pot that cooks the food automatically over time. You can tap the screen to wave your Magikarp fan, which will fan the flames beneath the pot and cook the food faster. Doing this also increases the Drowsy Power and dish mastery granted by the dish. Your team also enjoys the meal, which lets them recover a small bit of energy depending on how much they have left.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef:
  • You, the player, are able to cook dishes for your Snorlax, with one such unusual meal being a chocolate sauce and meat salad. Granted, Snorlax in lore is capable of eating anything without getting sick, but still.
  • Any combination of ingredients that does not create a recipe will result in a Mixed dish, which will still provide Drowsy Power but will not gain proficiency from being produced. Also, once a recipe is produced, extra items can be added without changing the dish. This can result in some very unusual circumstances if you use Auto Cook / Add Ingredients to throw in random ingredients into a dish for extra Drowsy Power, such as putting Bean Sausage into a Mixed Drink or Fiery Herbs and Greengrass Soybeans in Warm Moomoo Milk.
• Critical Hit: Two non-damaging instances:
  • There's a chance upon feeding a Biscuit that the Biscuit's potency will be thrice as effective, even if the Pokémon isn't Hungry. There's an even rarer chance upon feeding a Biscuit that the Friendship Gauge instantly fills to max regardless of the Biscuit used. This will always happen with any Shiny Pokémon.
  • There's a chance for the meal you cook for Snorlax to be Extra Tasty, further boosting the dish's Drowsy Power and leveling it up faster.
• Crutch Character: Pikachu, who is given as one of the two Starter Mons, is a surprisingly competent Berry farmer for starting players. It starts with decent carrying capacity and can generate Grepa Berries with relative haste, which can be improved upon if you spend the resources to evolve it into Raichu and happen to roll good Sub Skills. The Pikachu line falls off a bit once you make enough progress to focus on Favorite Berries and Dishes as your main method of Drowsy Power boosting, but it is very good at pumping up numbers early on even without the Favorite Berry bonus.
• Day in the Limelight: Much like how Pokémon: Magikarp Jump primarily focuses on Magikarp, Pokémon Sleep gives the spotlight to fan-favorite Snorlax.
• Early-Bird Cameo: While the Dratini line was only added to the game in January 2024, it was possible to find a Ditto sleeping while transformed into Dragonite from day one.
• Freemium: Players can pay real money to sign up for the Premium Pass. This gives, among other things, extra daily Sleep Points, unlimited access to past sleep data, a more potent daily Bonus Biscuit, access to the Premium Exchange, and extra monthly and tri-monthly free items.
• Gameplay Grading: At the end of the week, you're given a grade based on your overall sleep average. Grading is F, E, D, C, B, A, and S.
• Gentle Giant: As per usual, Snorlax is consistently a friendly and laid-back Pokémon, despite its immense girth.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The main goal. Not only do you have to literally catch all the Pokémon, but you also have to record every Pokémon's Sleep Style, which is random (though rarer sleep styles can show with higher Drowsy Power). The Pokémon you find are also based on your own Sleep Style (either Dozing, Snoozing, Slumbering, or Balanced, the last of which gives you encounters from all the aforementioned Sleep Styles).
• Green Hill Zone: Greengrass Isle is your starting location for sleep research, where a wide variety of Pokémon reside, especially Grass-types.
• Heavy Sleeper: Besides Snorlax, there are several Pokémon whose Sleep Styles are classified as Slumbering. It's the game's term for the deepest part of the sleep cycle when tracking your sleep.
• Holiday Mode: Starting in October 2023, the game started having special holiday-themed events for the week. Greengrass Isle is themed for the event, has special music playing, and presents an increase in a certain type of Pokémon. The Halloween and Christmas events also introduce additional Pokémon species for the game.
• In-Universe Game Clock: The game follows real-world time and the daylight changes accordingly as the day goes by. Morning is from 4AM-11:59AM, afternoon is from 12PM-5:59PM, while evening is from 6PM-3:59AM. Time-based evolutions are dependent on this (with the time window for day evolutions being from 6AM-5:59PM and night evolutions from 6PM-5:59AM) while meals can only be cooked once per time period.
• Luck-Based Mission: Trying to get the Pokémon you hope to seek will certainly not be an easy task, as who appears is entirely dependent on how you, the player, rests in bed at night—and sometimes there's nothing you can do to control your sleeping style.
• Lunacy: On August 30 - September 1, 2023, the game held its first global event, Good Sleep Day. It happens for three days every month near the full moon: the day before it, the day during it, and the day after it. During this, Snorlax consumes the full moon's energy to significantly boost its Drowsy Power, while the encounter rate for the Cleffa line is increased.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Many Pokémon's sleeping habits are taken from Pokédex entries from across the series. For example, only one of Doduo's heads sleeps at a time, Ditto turns into a stone to avoid being attacked, and Cubone cries in its sleep.
  • Several Pokémon can be found sleeping on top of Snorlax's belly.
  • The game's Pokémon raising mechanics are copy pasted wholesale from Pokémon GO, including the use of Candies to increase their EXP and Evolve them as well as sending back unwanted duplicates for more Candy. Dream Shards functionally stand in as the game's version of Stardust.
  • The cooking minigame takes a few cues from Pokémon Sword and Shield; namely, timing the wave of a fan to fan the flames beneath the cooking pot to complete the process sooner and increase the potency of the dish. You can also make Curry from the aforementioned game and Big Malasada from Pokémon Sun and Moon.
  • The Linking Cord from Pokémon Legends: Arceus makes a return for Pokémon who normally evolve via trade evolutions in the main games.
  • The game's Tagline is "Rest your very best!", a reference to the first line in the anime's original theme song.
• No Fair Cheating: If you repeatedly change your device's time, the game will temporarily suspend you.
• Old Save Bonus: If you connect a Pokémon GO Plus+ to both Pokémon GO and Pokémon Sleep, any Poké Stops you spin in GO will reward you with bonus Berries from Nightcap Pikachu in Sleep. In addition, recording sleep data for Sleep will grant bonus rewards when you log into GO, and in GO connecting the accessory for the first time unlocks a Special Research that allows you to catch the exclusive Nightcap Snorlax.
• Palmtree Panic: Cyan Beach is the first unlockable location, which is home to many Water-type Pokémon.
• Play Every Day: The General Store has a daily gift, which is a random item.
• Power-Up Food: You can cook dishes for Snorlax by spending collected ingredients. This can be done with either Auto Cook (using random ingredients) or manually (picking your own ingredients); each Snorlax you encounter likes different foods, and you can only cook recipes that it likes at the time; cooking a dish for Snorlax grants bonus Drowsy Power. Cooking can also only be performed thrice per day: Daytime, Afternoon, and Night.
• Random Number God: The Metronome Skill causes the user to trigger any other Main Skill in the game at random, just like in the main games. Much like in other media, it is also the Signature Move of the Togepi and Cleffa lines.
• Shown Their Work: The Totodile line sleeps with one eye open in their One-Eye Sleep and Atop-Belly Sleep Styles, like real-life crocodilians.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Snowdrop Tundra is the third unlockable location, which is a snowy island where most Ice-types reside.
• Socialization Bonus: Adding friends will earn you Pokémon candy based on what photo they chose for their research. Leveling up your friendship levels gives both you and your friends rewards such as Handy Candy.
• Sprint Meter: Each Pokémon has a Stamina gauge, which is displayed under their status in the Pokémon Box menu. Stamina depletes over the course of the day while your Pokémon are gathering Berries and Ingredients. If your Pokémon runs low on Stamina, they will become visibly tired, and if the gauge runs out, their ability to gather Berries and Ingredients drops to its absolute minimum. The only consistent way to recharge Stamina is to go to sleep, which will recharge 1% Stamina for every Pokémon in your active party for every point of Sleep Score earned. Some Pokémon also have the ability to regenerate a little bit of Stamina when their Skill is triggered by manually interacting with them.
• Starter Mon: You are given a Pikachu at the start of the game to work with. After recording your first sleeping session, you will be given the opportunity to befriend one of the Kanto starters, depending on your sleep style during that session: Bulbasaur for Dozing, Charmander for Snoozing, Squirtle for Slumbering.
• Tastes Like Friendship: You "catch" Pokémon in this game by giving them Biscuits. Biscuits come in Poké Biscuit, Great Biscuit, the daily Bonus Biscuit, and Master Biscuit varieties, with each subsequent tier granting a bigger boost to the Friendship Gauge. Giving a Pokémon a Master Biscuit immediately maxes the gauge out, while a Pokémon that is particularly hungry will triple the boosts it gets from eating Biscuits once. However, you cannot skip Snack Time because any leftover Bonus Biscuit will be fed to a random Pokémon if you try to do so.
• Temporary Online Content:
  • The first Halloween event, which was from October 30 - November 5, 2023, doubled all the Pokémon Candies gathered from Sleep Research in Greengrass Isle and gave you the chance to befriend special Pikachu wearing Halloween hats, which can't evolve. The event also coincided with the monthly Good Sleep Day event, which increased Snorlax's Drowsy Power and stacked with the Halloween event's Candy boost if research was conducted on Greengrass Isle.
  • During Eevee Week—held the week of November 21st^note This is because the numbers 1, 1, 2, and 1 in order sound like the Japanese name, Eievui.—Eevee and its Evolutions had a higher chance of appearing, and sleeping every day of the event earned a bonus 1121 Sleep Points.
  • The first Christmas event, which was from December 18-24, 2023, doubled all the Dream Shards gathered from Sleep Research in Greengrass Isle and gave you the chance to befriend special Pikachu wearing Santa hats, which can't evolve. Sleeping every day also granted a bonus 1225 Sleep Points.
  • Sleeping the first week of New Years had a higher chance for Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle, and a bonus 2024 points for recording sleep every day that week.
  • To celebrate the addition of Lapis Lakeside, an event was held on Greengrass Isle from January 29 - February 12, 2023, where the Dratini, Ralts, and Stufful lines can also be encountered there so that players who haven't unlocked Lapis Lakeside yet^note At least 240 Sleep Styles must be registered. can have the chance to befriend them.
  • For the week of Valentine's Day 2024, Snorlax's favorite foods are Drinks/Desserts, and extra-tasty meals are worth even more bonus Drowsy Power.
• Tummy Cushion: Various Pokémon can be found sleeping on top of Snorlax's belly at higher sleep star levels.
• Uncatty Resemblance: While he doesn't own any of the Snorlax that are on the islands, Professor Neroli bears an uncanny resemblance to Snorlax thanks to his rotund figure, hairstyle, and eyes always being closed. He even wears a Snorlax styled sleep mask.
• Underground Level: Taupe Hollow is the second unlockable location, which is a mountainside cave full of Rock and Ground-type Pokémon.
• Warm Milk Helps You Sleep: One of the possible food items you can make is the Warm Moomoo Milk, apt for a Heavy Sleeper like Snorlax.
• Wolverine Publicity: Though Snorlax is the main Pokémon in the game, Pikachu's the one used for official artwork.

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