Squid Game: Unleashed review – the same games but with less gore

Squid Game: Unleashed – now with added baseball bats (Netflix)

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.

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.

It’s also been thoughtfully ported to a video game format, so in the first two mini-games in each round, when you die you instantly respawn and carry on with the game until there are 16 winners. How that’s decided depends entirely on which of Unleashed’s 40+ games you’re playing, which offers a fair bit of variety.

Perhaps the most familiar is Red Light, Green Light, which is a race to the finish with the twist that there’s a giant doll at the end of the room. When she’s facing the wall you can run forwards, but when she turns around, if you’re spotted moving you get shot by hidden snipers. To spice things up sometimes you’ll play on a featureless pitch, other times there are patches of grass to hide in, or it can take place on an ice rink that makes it trickier to start and stop in time.

Snakes & Ladders starts everyone at the top of a tall tower, its floor panels turning red and then disappearing, the object being not to fall to your death. The Floor is Lava happens above actual lava, so staying on its gradually submerging hexagonal columns is the only way to live through it. Late for School has you rushing for a school gate via electrified swimming pools, moving circular saws, and Frogger-style school buses trying to run you over. The commonality is that all the games are very lethal.

To makes things even sketchier you can pick up weapons. Baseball bats, knives, dodgeballs, snowballs, and more, which vary in their effectiveness depending on the game you’re playing. A dodgeball in the back at just the wrong moment can get you shot in Red Light, Green Light, while a mistimed swing of a bat can actually help you across the finishing line. It adds a small extra dimension to the chaos, which is at its most palpable in the first round, with all 32 players still alive and participating.

While every character you unlock starts off equal, each has a special ability that unlocks at level two and increases in its potency as you continue levelling up. That could be a chance to start with an invincibility shield, knife or baseball bat, or a speed boosting running shoe. You’ll also unlock cosmetics for each character, making the field of competitors look increasingly variegated as you progress.

Another thing you’ll notice is the increasing difficulty. Games are ranked between one and five stars, and at one star it’s hard to lose, while at the other end of the scale you’ll need luck and a lot more savvy. That’s useful because with a decent number of mini-games, many with several variants, your approach to winning will constantly need to evolve. We found in most games knowing what to do proves less important than knowing what not to do; which areas to avoid, and ways of preventing the inherent random factor of more than 30 other players getting you killed too quickly.

There is a store, but in line with other Netflix titles, you can only spend in-game currency to unlock new characters and outfits. Prices seem pretty arbitrary, with one suit costing 1,000,000 and new characters priced anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000. Importantly though, nothing you can buy delivers an advantage in play, although levelling up your favourite character will eventually start giving you a small edge.

Games feel well populated – sometimes overpopulated – resulting in disconnections and server errors, something that a great many multiplayer games get wrong in their launch weeks. Given that it’s free and rounds are very short it’s hard to feel too short-changed when you get booted out early, but we’d expect these glitches to be ironed out in short order.

The big question is whether it will have any longevity. Its mini-games are fast and fun, and it’s mildly compelling unlocking cosmetics and progressing through the season’s league, but it’s a far less tactically involved game than Fortnite, or indeed any of the more complex battle royale games that have thrived over the past few years, most of which are also free to play.

Still, as a phone game its short rounds and rapid learning curve make it a winner, even if it’s highly unlikely you’ll still be playing it in three months’ time.

Squid Game: Unleashed review summary

In Short: Fast, fun and a little bit silly, Squid Game’s battle royale works surprisingly well on mobile, but it lacks the depth to provide any long term interest.

Pros: Plenty of mini-games, many of which have different variants. The first two rounds respawn you instantly, making for less downtime, and the games involve real skill and tactics.

Cons: While compelling it is eventually a bit shallow, and there are far more fully formed free-to-play battle royale games available.

Score: 6/10

Formats: iOS (reviewed) and Android
Price: Free for everyone at launch, but eventually only available to Netflix subscribers
Publisher: Netflix
Developer: Boss Fight Entertainment
Release Date: 18th December 2024
Age Rating: 12+