How Pokémon Shuffle Cost My Boyfriend Sleep

On multiple occasions my boyfriend has said he's been woken up in the middle of the night by my 3DS screen's light flashing in the dark bedroom. In reality this has probably happened only once or twice, but there is no saying that my 3AM playing sessions are only a far-fetched story.

The Pokémon fandom is still waiting for new main series Pokémon games to be announced after very quiet E3, but it hasn't been completely Pokémon-less summer for the fans of the franchise - thanks to Pokémon Shuffle and Pokémon Rumble World. Let's be honest, though. When Pokémon Shuffle was released last February (and the mobile version just a few days ago), I was about as interested in it as I'd be in a broken pair of ugly shoes - I've never been a big fan of puzzle games and the fact this puzzle game happened to involve my favourite franchise hardly changed my stance. It was probably in early May when I finally decided to give it a go - which is pretty late for the PokéManiac I am.

And for a puzzle game it hardly does anything new. In Pokémon Shuffle you compete in levels against Pokémon. You damage your opponent by combining your own Pokémon in rows of three or more. Combining the same characters make them disappear from your board and damage your opponent. The trick is to lower your opponent's HP bar to zero within a set number of moves – if you manage in this, you can try to catch the Pokémon. The less moves you've used the better catch rate you have. Sounds like your everyday puzzle game, right? Well, Pokémon Shuffle does bring in the type advantages and disadvantages from the main series. Your combos are more effective and deal more damage if your chosen Pokémon have a type advantage over the opponent – we all know this, right? But it doesn't always come down to the type advantages or disadvantages either. Some of the Pokémon have better special abilities that can aid you in certain stages and help you do better. On the other hand the opposing Pokémon can use all sorts of distractions to make your combo game harder, for example, freezing the play arena and limiting your choice of moves. Some stages can seem almost impossible, but with the right strategy it is actually a piece of cake. And then there's a bunch of items you can buy with in-game coins to make stages easier to beat - like an item that gives you +5 moves, delays the opponent's distractions or Mega Evolves your Pokémon instantly.

It's probably appropriate to mention now that Pokémon Shuffle is a free downloadable game from the 3DS Eshop - so it obviously means there's something optional you can pay for - and in Pokémon Shuffle's case it's the play time. And that's where go right into Shuffle's addictive nature.

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Imagine your childhood for a bit. You might have an hour to play with your toys or watch the telly before bedtime. Did you ever waste that hour doing any lame shit like cleaning up or just lazing around? I didn't think so - you were already there doing the nice things because eventually you'd run out of time and have to do something boring. It's the same with adults really. How often have you, instead of working on that approaching deadline, wanted to pick up a game or something fun and just relaxed a little? And then after the deadline on a relaxing day you just can't be arsed to pick up that PS2 controller at all - cos you can do it tomorrow after all.

Pokémon Shuffle addiction is just that - the devilish, almost parental restriction. In Shuffle you start with 5 Hearts - to play a stage you use a heart - and one heart needs 30 minutes to replenish. Whoops. With quick math you can already tell that to replenish all 5 Hearts you have to wait 2 hours and 30 minutes to use them all up again - and the Hearts won't store up even if you didn't touch your Pokémon Shuffle for days.

To get the most out of Pokémon Shuffle would be to pick it up every two and a half hour - just to play it maximum of 10 minutes (at least that's how long it takes me to use up all 5 Hearts since the levels aren't that long). Cheeky 10 minutes! Well, we all want to play more than that, so I'll leave my 3DS on sleep mode and check it every now and then in the vain hope that I've magically got more Hearts to spend.

With currently 220 Normal stages and 27 Expert stages (and they keep adding on more) Hearts can't replenish quickly enough. And it's definitely not likely that you'll pass all the levels on the first try! Just passing the stages isn't good enough, though. Depending on how many moves left you finish off the stage, the better rank you'll achieve. To unlock all the 27 Expert stages you must S rank all 220 Normal stages, and believe me, it ain't always easy. Especially without the help of the items that are quite costly.

And that isn't all. In addition to normal and expert stages, Pokémon Shuffle also offers the player all the delights of Special stages. On Special Stages we get special competitions and challenges that run only for a limited time - and if you miss out on those, who knows when the next chance will come? Competitions and challenges can often be quite hard ones - especially if only the best players will get the specific Pokémon in question - so you'll need to level up the team you've already got and spend serious amounts of play coins to make sure you'll succeed. After all this you'll probably not have that many play coins to help you to unlock all the Expert stages - now you can try to gather up your coins in the Meowth Stage where you may get about 500 coins if you're very lucky - which I'm not, usually ending up with 330 coins instead. For a bit of perspective, to buy one Mega Start that allows your Pokémon to mega evolve right from the beginning of the round, you need 2000 coins.

Well, if you happen to have the real-life money (something I don't possess very often) all these struggles matter very little. You can spend about £43 (48 dollars/euros) to get yourself 75 Jewels which can be then exchanged either for new Hearts or play coins. Those rich bastards.

So when you wake up at night and maybe have a sip of water, it's surprisingly tempting to just pick up the 3Ds and make most of it really - it's just convenient to use your Hearts at night after all and wake up in the morning with them completely replenished. Wouldn't it be waste not to do this? I think my boyfriend is very unreasonable to make such a fuss about my logical Shuffle strategy...

But I just dread to imagine what my life would be, if I also had Pokémon Shuffle on mobile.