Squid Game is almost back on our screens for the very last time. And with it, a whole new selection of games for its competitors to play.
The show, of course, has form in twisting childhood games into something sinister and creepy. We’ve had Red Light, Green Light (surely, the song is still seared into everybody’s memory); we’ve had the horrifying glass bridge game.
But the list is long, and it’s been five years since the original launched. In the interests of research – and a quick refresher before the new series starts – here’s all the games that director Hwang Dong-hyuk has included since the start.
Ddakji
The game that started it all. At his lowest ebb, Seong Gi-hun is approached by a mysterious person called the Salesman on the local tube.
He offers Gi-hun the chance to earn cash by playing Ddakji. This is a playground game, where players use folded bits of paper, and throw them down onto the other person’s pieces to flip them over. If they manage to, then they win. Naturally, Gi-hun doesn’t do so well, and for his efforts, he gets repeatedly slapped in the face. Ouch.
Red Light, Green Light
Otherwise known as Grandmother’s Footsteps in the UK. In this game, somebody (in this case, a massive metal doll) puts their back to the other players. Those players have to make it from one end of the hall (or playground) to that person. The catch: if they turn around and spots somebody moving, they’re out.
Of course, Squid Game put their own brutal twist on this, by fitting the massive metal doll with motion detectors, and shooting anybody who moved. Lovely.
Dalgona/ ppopgi
Another Korean fave. Dalgona is a common streetside snack in Korea: melted sugar with some baking soda, cooked on a hot plate. The word ‘ppopgi’ (which is the name of the game) means ‘to pluck’ in Korean, and some vendors will stamp a shape in the middle of the disc for fun, and give children who buy it a needle to try and carve out the shape before it breaks.
As it’s basically 99 per cent sugar, the whole thing is fragile, and will break easily. In Squid Game, the players are tasked with doing the same thing. Then they’re unceremoniously shot if they don’t manage it.
Tug of War
A game that’s played the world over. Two teams face off against each other, both holding a rope. They must then compete to pull the other team over a line in the middle of the ground between them.
It’s a strength contest, and in Korea, it’s called ‘Juldarigi’. Many villages still play it during the lunar festival, using huge ropes – and apparently, the team that wins will net a good harvest for their village. In Squid Game, there’s an extra twist: the teams are playing the game over a massive, 50-foot drop, promising death for the losing team.
Glass Bridge
There isn’t a real life equivalent to this game, but it’s probably most similar to hopscotch – with a deadly twist. The players have to cross from one side of the hall to another, over a massive drop. The only way they can is via do slender glass ‘bridges’ made up of individual panels.
The catch: some of the panels are made of tough glass, and some will break when stepped on. As a result, a lot of the contestants go plunging to their deaths.
Marbles
Never has watching people throw marbles been so stressful. This game killed off quite a few major characters in Squid Game season one, but the premise is simple: two players face off against each other. Each has ten marbles, and both players are tasked with winning all their opponents’ marbles back off them.
In the show, the players got to choose what kind of marble game to play. That means we saw games like ‘dig a hole’ – where you have to land a marble in a hole in the ground; odd or even (where a player holds a hand behind their back and the other has to guess if it contains an odd or even number); hit the marbles out of a shape on the floor, using other marbles – or even just using marbles to hit other marbles. Of course, the loser died.
Squid Game
How to explain Squid Game? This is a common game that’s played all across Korea, though reports vary about how it originated. It needs to be played in a sandy yard, ideally, and the playing space is a series of shapes (you know, two circles, a square and a triangle) drawn into the dirt (meant to mimic the shape of a squid).
The players are then separated into two teams: attack and defence. When the game starts, the defending team can run around on two feet, while the offence can only hop around on one.
There are a complex set of rules governing what you can and can’t do, but as Gi-hun explains in the show, “in order to win, the attackers must tap the small closed-off space on the squid's head with their foot.
“If the defender pushes you out of the squid's line, you die. That's right. You die. Once you take the winning tap, you yell out, ‘Hurray.’ And, in that moment, I felt as if I owned the entire world.”
Flying Stone
Similar to Ddakji. This game appears in the Six-Legged Pentathlon round, and in it, players must knock over a stone by throwing another stone at it.
Gonggi
Variations of this game exist all over the world, too. Players need to throw and catch five small stones in their hand, starting with one, then increasing them in number. Eventually, they need to flip them from their palm to the tops of their fingers, before throwing and catching them all. Without dropping any.
Spinning Top
Another Pentathlon game, where the player needs to wind a piece of string around a spinning top, before throwing it so that the top spins on the ground.
Jegi
Like hacky sack: it’s a small bag that a player must keep from touching the ground by kicking into the air five times.
Mingle
An odd one – but deadly. This game from the second season saw all the players gather together on a big revolving stage in the middle of a room lined with doors. The music plays, but when it stops, a number is called out. The players then need to team up with enough people to reach that number and hide in one of the doors before the time runs out. If it does, and you’re not behind a door… well, you can guess the rest.
Squid Game Season 3 is streaming on Netflix from June 27
