“Pokémon” updates during the Nintendo franchise’s Press Conference event earlier this week were of a wide variety of things. There were the conventional game titles that are now under development, such as a sequel for the 3DS’ “Detective Pikachu” coming to the Switch. Then there is the very utilitarian “Pokémon Home” cloud storage service that would tie all games together online and allow players to save their Pokémon between titles.

And there is also something of the weird side. Another game that Nintendo and the Pokémon Company have announced is unusual in that in order to play, one must sleep.

'Pokémon' raising combined with sleeping?

The upcoming “Pokémon Sleep” is, according to Fortune, an odd fusion of the monster-collecting franchise and the world of digital wellness. This in-development app will work in conjunction with a new version of the Poke-ball-like Go Plus peripheral that was designed to work with the “Go” mobile game app. The so-called Go Plus+ (pronounced “plus-plus”) will function as a sleep tracker that will measure how long a player goes to sleep. With either the mobile device containing “Pokémon Sleep” or the Go Plus+ accessory laid beside one’s pillow, all one has to do is snooze, and the app will collect the sleep data to apply to its store of pocket-monsters.

It is a rather vague way to describe how one plays “Pokémon Sleep,” but that was pretty much all the information the company’s CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara shared during their Press Conference event.

“We want to turn sleep into entertainment,” he said. The best speculation on the “Sleep” app as Reuters tells it, is that the amount of shut-eye one gets (and recorded) will go into training whatever Pokémon is currently stored in one’s device. A simplistic description will be, the longer the player snoozes, the stronger their “Mon” will be through the “Pokémon Sleep” app.

From activity in 'Go' to dormancy in 'Sleep'

Pokémon and Nintendo look to further integrate the monster-catching experience into facets of daily life. During the colossal first year of Nintendo and Niantic’s “Pokémon Go” game app, it encouraged players to do a lot of walking around, not only getting them to exercise but also inspire some gamers out of bouts of depression.

The new “Sleep” app would then be the “dormancy” counterpart of “Go,” promising to help what monsters the player caught to become stronger by getting their masters to clock out for a full eight hours if they could. Since the app is not yet ready, only gameplay guesses can be made.

This “Pokémon Sleep” app, along with the “Home” cross-platform cloud storage service and possibly the Nintendo Switch “Detective Pikachu” game sequel, are all expected to release in the following year.
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