The stories about parenthood and how you’ll never sleep again are almost all true.
Sho and I have been New Parents™ for a good two months and seven days now, and we evidently still lack sleep. The bags under our eyes are darker than they’ve ever been, we respond to messages in an impeccably delayed manner, and our sense of time is warped on a whole other level.
On a good night, we get about three to four hours in with a much lower probability of interruptions for milky time or a diaper change from the kid compared to our first two weeks with him. We’re still constantly dazed though, sometimes dozing off in the middle of a feeding or improperly taping on a diaper. The worst is when the kid just won’t sleep and the sun is already peeking through the window, screaming, “Heeeyyy, suckas! I’m back!”
We’re doing pretty well now. Although we’re still excessively tired and yearn for a nap in the middle of the day, I think a routine—albeit an erratic one—has been established. So, what do you do when things are good? You add a little something to make it even better… or more chaotic.
Enter Pokémon Sleep.
The premise is simple: help a Pokémon researcher study the sleep habits of various Pokémon by sleeping. Sounds pretty easy, right? For New Parents™, it might be a little more complicated than that.
The mobile game, developed by Niantic and SELECT BUTTON, revolves around Snorlax and its “Drowsy Power.” Your task is to clock in a good number of hours sleeping, and then take photos of Pokémon and their adorable Dozing, Snoozing, and Slumbering positions when you wake up. So far, I’ve only taken photos of 1-star rating positions because I don’t get enough sleep. Going to bed at 4 a.m. is no help either. It seems, the best way to win at this game is to go to bed with the app open by your side at a reasonable hour, fall into a wonderfully deep slumber, and wake up to the sound of Edvard Grieg’s “Morgenstimmung” coming from the heavens.
I don’t know if it was leftover fatigue or Niantic/SELECT BUTTON’s brilliant strategy, but minutes into the tutorial, I was already nodding off. There is a lot of tapping around before actually getting into the game itself and falling into the act of sleeping. I didn’t even get to complete the tutorial in one sitting (or should I say one snoozing), because the kid woke up before the required 90 minutes of sleep the game needs to record your session. If you don’t hit at least 90 minutes, you’ll have to start all over again, which was the case for this New Parent™.
Just like anyone you know in the waking world, the Pokémon that join you in your research also need a good night’s sleep and they rely on you to get those hours in. I honestly haven’t slept enough with this game to get my Pokémon to half of their happiness level and I feel bad for them. It’s as if hanging out with me tires them out but they simply cannot get away because they were digitally programmed to stay by my side against their will.
Despite labeling itself as a sleep tracker, Pokémon Sleep isn’t even a very effective one. Before launch, I imagined it would get its data from your smartwatch and sync with your Health app, but instead it relies on a more primitive approach by using your phone’s microphone to record your snores, wheezes, and farts through the night. I’m not a big fan of being forced to keep the app open the entire time, especially since I also track the kid’s sleep, eat, and poop times on another app. If you exit the game in the middle of a sleep session, a little prompt consistently shows up, telling you to go back to the app “for proper sleep tracking,” and that could get pretty annoying. Maybe in another life, I would’ve sprung for the Pokémon GO Plus + device to track my sleep so I wouldn’t have to keep the app on the whole time, but that’s still $54.99 that could go to another video game.
Clearly, the New Parent™ isn’t Niantic/SELECT BUTTON’s intended target market of Pokémon Sleep. Despite that, I’ve consistently logged in for 17 days with a pathetic 59 hours of sleep in total. Not at all impressive, I know, but considering our current situation and how the app refuses to track the less-than-90-minute catnaps I get to have, this is the best I can do. In the meantime, I’ll just have to admit defeat. This is one Pokémon game I won’t be able to beat until I level up from New Parent™ status to then next part of parenthood.
cute..