Squid Game is a Netflix show about a series of life-or-death games put on for the entertainment of a cabal of shady billionaires: the players are desperate, debt-laden people willing to put their lives on the line for a chance to win a huge cash prize. The rub is that only one of the hundreds of participants will win in the end. The rest will die, usually brutally, along the way.
Squid Game has become the most watched original show in the history of Netflix. Why has a show this unflinching nasty gotten so popular? Well, to start, it's wonderfully executed by the cast and crew, led by Lee Jung-jae (as Seong Gi-hun) in front of the camera and Hwang Dong-hyuk behind it. I also think people see something of their own experience in Squid Game, as weird as it is to say. In a world where the divide between the rich and the rest of us is growing ever wider, when things like housing and groceries become increasingly difficult to buy, when a tiny handful of the world's richest people have an outsized hand in how a country is run, how far away are we really from billionaires pitting us against each other in gladitorial arenas for their amusement? The Squid Games aren't real, but sometimes it feels like they are.
Finally, the games themselves are edge-of-your-seat terrifying. Imagine you're an ordinary person who wakes up on a private island and told that if you don't cut out the little shape from the sugar pastry, you die. People like being scared, and Squid Game delivers and delivers and delivers. The show may have a lot to say about our world, but the adrendeline-pumping games are what get people in the door.
There's one more season of Squid Game on the way, and I'm sure it will feature its own set of new games that make fans pass out just from thinking about them. While we wait, let's take a look back at the eight games we've seen so far, ranked by how freaking horrifying they would be to actually participate in.
8. Marbles
Every one of these games is scary to play: if you lose you die, after all. But of all the games we've seen so far, Marbles has the most relaxed atmosphere.
The rules are very freeform: players are told to separate into pairs of two. Each player is given 10 marbles. Whoever gets the other players' marbles wins. How marbles go back and forth are up to the players. Maybe they play a guessing game. Maybe they take turns trying to chuck a pebble through a ring, I dunno. When this game goes down in the first season, no one tries to just take their partners' marbles by force, which is quite sporting of them.
I think this game is the least terrifying because it gives the players at least the illusion of control. They set the rules, they make the game. It's only an illusion, of course; if players refused to play, they'd probably both be shot dead. But even the illusion of control is better than nothing.
Likewise, the atmosphere for Marbles is as calm as the players want to make it. There are no bright lights and loud noises telling them they have to move. No one has to run anywhere, and there's no chance the floor could give out underneath you. It's just you, your partner, 20 marbles, and 30 minutes on the clock. Things will get very tense, but compared to some of the other games, this is a warm bath.
7. Dalgona
Dalgona is the only other game that has a somewhat chill atmosphere. Again, no one is trying to pull you off a ledge or anything like that. You just get to sit down and finish your task...or not.
The rules are as follows: you get a dalgona cookie, which is a Korean candy made from from melted sugar and baking soda. Each cookie has a shape carved into it: a circle, a triangle, a star and an umbrella. You have to cut the shape out of the cookie before the time is up. If you take too long, you die. If you crack the cookie the wrong way, you die.
Obviously this game would be horrificly stressful to play, especially if you got a difficult shape like an umbrella, but at least you're left alone to do your thing. You don't have to worry about a teammate screwing up and killing the whole group, and none of the other players are actively trying to kill you. And if you get the triangle, you're basically home free!
5. Red Light, Green Light
Everyone knows the rules to Red Light, Green Light: you move when the light is green and stop when the light is red. In a predictable Squid Game-esque twist, in this version, if you move on red, you're shot through the head.
This is the first game contestants play upon arriving at the Squid Games, which probably means that everyone will be extra frightened. But in a bubble, this is probably the easiest one to survive, which in theory makes it one of the least scary. As long as you follow the rules, you'll cross the finish line alright.
Of course, that's easier said than done. The contestants aren't told of the stakes ahead of time, and once the first person gets shot, everyone else reliably freaks out and panic ensues. No one could be blamed for feeling horrified after that. But in a vacuum, this first game is very surviveable.
6. Squid Game
The Squid Game probably has the most complicated rules of any of the games on this show. We start with a court drawn on the ground, in the shape of a squid. There are two teams: offense and defense. The defense starts within the squid-shaped court and the defense without. The offense has to hop on one foot outside the lines until they pass the neck of the squid. Then they have to rush in and attempt to tap the top of the court with their foot, all while the defensive players try to push them out of bounds. If they are indeed pushed out of the court, they die. If the offensive players reach their destination, the defensive players die.
In the first season of the show, the Squid Game is the final game played, and there are only two people left by the end of it: Gi-jun and his friend Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo). By this point in the game, there probably aren't that many people left, which at least makes the odds even. All you have to do is beat one more person, and you're done.
I'd think seeing the light at the end of the tunnel might give some players that one last shot of adrenaline they need to push through to the end, although they might just make it scarier for others. Either way, the final lands in the middle of the pack.
4. Tug-of-War
Like Red Light, Green Light, everyone knows the rules of Tug-of-War: tug on the rope with the rest of your team until you pull the other team over the line. In Squid Game, when one team gets pulled over the line, they plunge to their deaths.
Tug-of-War introduces a new, terrifying twist into the games: teamwork. I think the notion of you losing — which in this case means dying — because someone on your team isn't able to hold up their end of the bargain. It means less control, and that's frightening. If I'm going to die playing kids games, at least let me die on my own terms.
Plus, imagine this scenario: you're on the losing team. You can feel yourself getting pulled closer and closer to the edge as everyone in your line grows more and more tired. The person if front of teeters, about to slip off, and there's absolutely nothing you go do about it. You'd know you were dead far too many moments before you fall yourself. Chills.
3. The Six-Legged Pentathlon
Teamwork returns in the six-legged pentathlon, where you're tied leg by leg to four teammates who then have to make their way around a track participating in five games. Win them all within the time limit, and you live. Fail to win them all before time runs out, and you die.
We have lots of different rules here for each minigame:
- Ddakji: Toss a folded paper tile at another folder paper tile on the ground, trying to flip it over.
- Flying Stone: Stand behind a line and try to knock over a stand positioned some distance away by throwing your own stone at it. If you miss, the entire team has to walk over and pick up your throwing stone.
- Gong-gi: Throw five dice in the air and catch them in your hand in a series of ways that get more and more complicated as they go. Then they have to catch all five dice on the back of their hand.
- Spinning Top: Wrap a cord around a top and then toss it in a way that it spins. If you fail, the entire team has to go and get the top.
- Jegi: This is basically hacky sack; you to kick a little felt ball called a jegi with your feet or ankle five times in a row.
Each of the five team members needs to do one of the five games. This is like doing a group project at school, with all the awkwardness that implies, only now you're killed if you don't pass. If you get stuck on one game, you watch the clock tick down knowing you have less and less of a chance of completing the others. If you win, everyone in your group will encourage you. But if you have a hard time, you don't just have to deal with your own frustration, but theirs as well. And you're fixed at the leg to these people. I think I'd pass out from stress.
2. Mingle
Mingle is one of the most devilishly simple games here. The rules are simple but take a minute to explain: the contestants are herded into a large circular room with a rotating platform in the middle and a series of doors on the edges. They ride the platform while listening to a song that is way too cheery for the occasion, and then the music stops. They hear a number like "two" or "three." They then have to form a group of people matching that number and run into one of the rooms before time runs out. If they have more or less than the correct number of people in a room, they die. If they're not in a room when time is up, they die.
Mingle may be the most chaotic of the games. For a minute everyone is just rotating calming on the center platform, and then — they don't know when — the music changes and they have to scramble to stay alive. The contrast between that stupid happy song and the bedlam right afterwards would stress me out, to say nothing of the need to suddenly form a team and beat back everyone else trying to get to those rooms. What if I'd already made an alliance with a team of three but the game only calls for two? Who's getting ejected? Mingle can break apart families and friend groups like that.
1. The Glass Bridge
There's really no contest. The Glass Bridge the scariest of the Squid Games.
You can't replicate this game at home. The organizers have built a series of glass squares over a cavernous drop; you won't survive if you fall. There's a bit of space between each square, so you have to jump from one to the other. Some of the squares are study, and others will give out the moment you land on them. The rules are simple: cross the bridge. If you don't do it in the time limit, all the squares blow up.
In the first season of Squid Game, there's a guy who worked in a glass factory who is able to figure out which squares are sturdy by studying them long enough. If you don't have that guy with you, you just have to pick a square and jump to it, praying it won't give out. Every new move will be a leap into the terrifying unknown. Even if you land on solid glass, the panic could make you fall. The Squid Game organizers are very clever when it comes to thinking up ways to scare the players, but I don't think they've yet topped this one.
What fresh hell awaits our players in the third and final season of Squid Game? We'll find out when the new episodes drop on June 27, 2025.
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