Pokémon Sleep helped me catch ’em all — all the z’s, that is

theverge.com:

For a long time, the only thing I knew about Pokémon was the shitposter theory that a clown named Mr. Mime was Ash Ketchum’s secret father. I’d never played any of the games or watched the cartoons; it is occasionally hard to explain how I totally missed the Pokémon boat as an elder millennial who had little interest in picking any of it up. But a few months ago, The Pokémon Company finally got me with Pokémon Sleep. 

As a lifelong insomniac who had recently regressed to upsetting levels of sleep dysfunction, this was a chance to finally dive into what seemed like a cute, low-stakes, low-barrier-to-entry app that could keep me company at four in the morning. The concept is simple: Pokémon Sleep is framed as a “sleep research study,” where, each week, the player feeds and studies a Snorlax, whose “drowsy power” attracts other pokémon when it sleeps. As the Snorlax grows, it attracts more pokémon, which can be caught as indentured research assistants to collect food for the Snorlax. No one sleeps until the player sleeps. As the day goes on, the helpers get tired — their smiles start to fade, and their little eyelids droop while they wait for the sweet release of unconsciousness.

The only way to play is to sleep; if you want to be good, you need to sleep well, but if you want to be great, you need to sleep consistently well.

Today, a Snorlax is the first thing that greets me in the morning and the last thing I see at night. I’ve been in bed by 2AM for the last 67 nights and had at least seven hours of sleep every single time. Out of these past weeks, I’ve had what Pokémon Sleep deems “S-tier” sleep every week except two, which merely earned an “A” rank. Three times a day, I briefly open the app to cook meals for my Snorlax