Pokémon Sleep is a snooze

theverge.com:

By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

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It makes a lot of sense that Pokémon Sleep is a simple game — it’s something that you play in part by sleeping, after all. There’s only so much complexity you can embed in an experience where players aren’t conscious much of the time. Even still, after spending most of the past week with the gamified sleep tracking app tucked under my pillow, I can’t help but wish there were something more beyond looking at dozing Eevees and feeding berries to a Snorlax. It’s neither encouraging me to sleep more nor giving me much to do. It’s a bit of a snooze.

The premise in Pokémon Sleep, as with pretty much every other game in the series, is centered on research. Early on, you’ll meet a charmingly rumpled professor named Neroli who is researching pokémon sleep habits. Apparently, this involves a big snoozing Snorlax at a campsite who will encourage other pokémon to appear and also doze off. The goal is to see as many different sleeping monsters as possible; you have a pokédex to fill out as always, only this time, it’s filled with sleeping positions.

In practice, it works like this: the primary way you “play” Pokémon Sleep is by putting your phone face down under or beside your pillow so that the app can track your sleep (which includes recording any loud noises, though this can be turned off) and award you points based on how close you get to the ideal 8.5 hours a night. The game is surprisingly nonjudgmental; it simply shows you how long you slept and gives you