Squid Game games, ranked by how real and terrifying they are

Squid Game, the Korean survival drama series from writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk has held the number one spot on Netflix’s top 10 list for three consecutive weeks since the show premiered in September It’s currently poised to become the service’s biggest show ever.

Seong Gihun (Lee Jungjae) is a father who has become a gambling addict and divorced. He’s recruited to a 456 person tournament for a chance at winning a prize cash of approximately 39 million dollars. Over the course of the first season, Gi-hun and the other players are subjected to a gauntlet of six high-stakes contests patterned after classic children’s schoolyard games, resulting in either the player being killed or allowed the chance to advance to the next round. The show’s charismatic cast, its brightly colored set and cheerful colors are all compelling, but the true draw is the brutal challenges that each participant must face. None of these are familiar to anyone else, except for a few exceptions.

It was an amazing first season. As I watched, I thought about the dangers and challenges of each one. And if my own survival would depend on them. Several of the games themselves are terrifying only for the fact that the participants don’t actually Know what game they’re about to play until they’re playing it. Barring that, they’re pretty easy — so long as you can keep a cool head. With that in mind, we’ve pulled together a power ranking of each of the games played throughout the first season of Squid GameThese are the most difficult and horrifying of all.

7. Pog/Ddakji

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While thIs game isn’t part of the Squid Game tournament proper, it is The game that introduces Seong Gi-hun, the series’ protagonist, to the tournament. While waiting for his train home Gi-hun — a jobless layabout and habitual gambler — is approached by a mysterious salesman who offers to pay 100,000 won (approx. Each round of Ddakji is won and lost by Gi-hun.

The rules are simple: both Gi-hun and the salesman take turns using folded pieces of paper to hit one another’s piece of paper, and the first one to make the other one’s flip wins. You would not be in danger if you cut the paper. There’s a catch though: For every round Gi-hun loses to the salesman, he’ll owe the salesman 100,000 won. In lieu of money, the salesman offers to deduct 100,000 won from Gi-hun’s debt for every time he allows himself to be slapped. Again, there’s no danger in this game other than being physically humiliated in public for the sake of petty cash, but the real goal behind the game is to weed out potential candidates for the tournament to see how low a person is willing to debase — and even endanger — themselves if offered enough money to do so.

6. Marbles

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Are you afraid of marbles? Marbles are not scary! Marbles aren’t scary! What is the worst thing about swallowing a marble? It could cause stomach problems. Forgoing that, there’s nothing scary about playing or losing a game of marbles … unless of course, there’s a masked man in a pink military jumpsuit standing next to you threatening to shoot you point blank if you were to lose said game of marbles.

There aren’t even concrete rules to Squid Game marbles; you just have to play any game you make up with your partner using 20 marbles and whoever has all the marbles at the end is the winner. It’s less scary and more heartbreaking, especially if you opted to team up with a partner who you know and trust — like Sang-woo and Ali or Gi-hun and the elderly Oh Il-nam — without knowing what the expectations of the game were going to be.

5. Ppopgi/Honeycomb candy

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The danger of getting poisoned from candy is marginally greater than that of marbles. But this candy isn’t dangerous. This everyday confection is made of baking soda, melted sugar, and cookie cutters. Eating Korean Ppogi can lead to stomach pains or cavities. However, it is possible to get a cavity or tummy ache from Korean Ppogi. Squid Game we’re talking about — where even the most seemingly benign and innocuous of activities harbors dire and life-threatening consequences. You remember the guy in the white mask with pink pants and the gun? Yeah guess what, he’s back. But that’s not the truth: Honeycomb Candy actually happens Before the marble game, and honestly you can’t tell any of these dudes apart from one another because of their masks.

These rules are very simple. Every player receives a tin with a honeycomb that is stamped with one or more of the following four shapes. Each player must take the shape out of the honeycomb Tin within 10 minutes to be able to survive. Any player that fails to comply with either of these requirements will be fired on sight. It is difficult to determine how to eliminate the particular shape. If you choose to use a circle, triangle or star as your shape choice, it is relatively easy. However, it becomes more difficult when you select an umbrella or star. Instead of trying to chisel out their honeycomb shapes with a toothpick, several players attempt to do so in desperate fashion. However Seong Gi-hun along with a few other players come up with a better solution. This is a delicious and frightening challenge.

4. 4.

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Alright, now we’re talking. This is truly scary. If you’ve never played Red Light, Green Light, here are the rules: Players stand at the far end of a field behind a starting line while another person stands at the far opposite side of said field. The goal for the players is to cross to the opposite side of the field, moving only when the person at the opposite side says “Green Light” and stopping when they say “Red Light.” If someone is spotted moving after Red Light is called, they are eliminated from the game. You see? Here is the place where you will find the giant animatronic Terminator-looking girl.

Probably the most iconic “character” in Squid Game apart from the aforementioned masked pink jumpsuit henchmen and the mysterious obsidian-clad Front Man orchestrating the games, the giant little girl robot turns to face a tree at the opposite end of the players and shouts “Green Light,” only to randomly corkscrew her head around à la Regan MacNeil from The Exorcist and shout “Red Light.” If she catches any players moving while Red Light is called, that player is shot by a number of turrets positioned high above the play area. Naturally, with this being the first of the six games in the tournament and the players themselves being blissfully unaware of the immense mortal danger they’ve put themselves in, that means there’s a whole lot of people who get killed trying to escape before the remaining players finally wise up and start playing correctly. Each player has five minutes to reach the goal without being killed. Red Light, Green Light is the perfect tone-setter for the horrors the competition’s participants will soon find themselves in.

3. Squid Game

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Y’know what’s scary? Knife fighting. Scary knife fights. What’s even scarier is a knife fight in the middle of an obtuse foreign children’s game played between former childhood friends-turned-bitter rivals for fortune and survival. Squid Game’s name is derived from the fact that it takes place on a field made of sand. This creates a barrier between attackers and defenders, which separates the players. The goal of the attackers is to cross the center of the field on one foot before attempting to reach the “home” square drawn at the opposite side of the field, while the defender’s objective is to stop them … in this case, at all costs.

This is a game of life or death that can be played for millions of money for the entertainment of clandestine masked players Keep your eyes closed-esque aristocrats eagerly watching on, there’s a whole lot of stabbing, choking, punching, and sand throwing. Needless to say it’s very sad, uncomfortable, and heart-pounding to watch; the perfect nightmarish scenario on which to end the tournament off on a high note.

2. Tug of war

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Tug of War isn’t inherently a “scary” game, unless of course you’re terrified of any form of coordinated physical exertion. Most people are familiar with the basic rules: each team holds a rope of large braided length. The other holds the rope from the opposite end. By pulling at the rope simultaneously, the players must drag the rope across the line that divides them. The competition organizers are Squid GameParticipants are chained to the rope, and must stand several hundred feet above an open chasm. This will increase the challenge. Overpowered teams lose, and they will be dragged over the chasm before the guillotine splits the rope, making them fall to their doom. It’s grisly stuff; the kind of game that hammers in the chilling “kill or be killed” attitude that each of the individual participants must have if they’re to have any hope of surviving the tournament and claiming the 45.6 billion won (approx. The prize is $38,452 USD.

1. Glass Stepping Stone Bridge

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Oh my god, absolutely NotI will. I will march in front of a firing squad before you ever catch my ass stepping one foot across that “bridge.” I don’t care how much money is on the line, I’d have been out of this tournament and safely back home by the end of game one, trust — y’all must be out of your damn mind thinking I would ever play this stupid game.

[Takes a deep breath]The penultimate and fifth game in the series is now. Squid Game is the “Glass Bridge” game. It’s not based on any schoolyard game that I’m familiar with — hopscotch, maybe? — but instead is a perverse invention devised by the orchestrators of the tournament for their own sick amusement. Glass Bridge is more about blind luck than skill. Each of the remaining 16 players is standing at the other end of a huge room, several hundred feet above ground. Between the entrance and the exit of the room are two “bridges” of side-by-side glass panels, each with 18 panels across. To win the game, the players have to cross the bridge within 16 minutes. There’s a catch. Each panel between the bridges is made from one type of glass. Tempered glass can support the weight of at most two people, while regular glass will break on impact, sending the player plunging to their deaths. To make matters worse, even if you somehow manage to make it across to the opposite side, you’ll be pelted by a shower of splintered glass shards that will explode once the time limit is reached. The Glass Bridge is without doubt the most difficult, terrifying and cruel game of all. Squid GameAnd I’d absolutely die the first time.