Squid Game: Unleashed review – the same games but with less gore
Squid Game: Unleashed review – the same games but with less gore
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As the second season approaches, Netflix provide their own adaptation of Squid Game, in a more violent rival to Fall Guys. When Korean TV series Squid Game was released to an unsuspecting public in 2021, its enormous popularity took everyone by surprise. What was less surprising was its deadly game show subject matter, which occurs with surprising frequency in fiction of all varieties. Forget The Truman Show with its boring non-lethal, humiliation-only tropes, Squid Game is about killing almost everybody involved.
![[Squid Game: Unleashed screenshot]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/SEI_233795020-584a.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
The concept goes back decades, through Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Running Man (which is getting a remake that’s closer to the original Stephen King story), and fellow book adaptations Battle Royale and The Hunger Games. The details are always different but the idea that people would want to watch others risking and losing their lives performing silly game show tasks has been around for a long time.
In ancient Rome it happened in real life, but these days, of course, it’s only simulated. Players of Fortnite and Among Us will be more than familiar with the challenge of being the last person standing, while Fall Guys tries to play things purely for laughs. And so it is that Squid Game: Unleashed has also been released, where you once again compete against random internet foes who are also all trying to be the sole survivor.
Each round of Unleashed comprises three mini-games based on the ones seen in the TV show, albeit with considerably fewer contestants. Starting with 32 players, 16 survivors go on to compete in round two, and the eight survivors of that go into a final round in which there can only be one winner. The presentation is very cartoony, so the constant gore doesn’t really come across as any more savage than Tom & Jerry.
