Squid Game is a show about a group of people, mostly broke and in debt, who decide to enter a contest to win 45.6 billion won (38,793,653 USD). 

The contest is simple.  

Play the game and follow its rules; play the game to get to the next round. If you cannot follow those directions, players are told, you will be eliminated. 

The characters soon find out that elimination is more than just from the game, it is from life itself. 

One strength of the show is how it tells the collective story of 456 players while also  zooming in on the seven main characters. It is clear who the protagonists and who the antagonists are, and it is clear when one of them switches from good to evil.

The show also draws out emotions such as empathy, as in one scene when a character sacrifices themself for their partner in the fourth game; and competitiveness, greed and determination, when one character decided to turn on their partner during the fifth game. 

Players work in pairs, and the winner of each pair gets to live while the loser is shot to death. In one chilling scene a player turns on his partner. He takes his partner’s marbles and replaces them with pebbles, resulting in the betrayed partner getting shot and the betrayer continuing the game.

Another key feature is the show’s childishness. After all, the plot is built around children’s games (red light green light, the dalgona game, tug of war, marbles and more). The title of the show is even a popular South Korean children’s game. 

The set and character costumes are well designed to emphasize this childishness. The players wear a green tracksuit and the guards wear a neon pink suit. The set is full of many bright colors as well. The innocence emphasizes the underlying horror, as characters are literally dying over children’s games.

Another strength of the show is suspense, which is very well developed. The writers try to trick viewers by playing with our expectations.

You might not expect one of the main characters to die. However, the show will surprise you. As soon as episode 6, they begin killing off multiple main characters. From there on out, each episode has at least one main character that dies. It creates a sense of suspense, and for those attached to the characters, intense emotions. 

One example of this is a scene during a marble game when one player tricks their partner into believing they have the marbles to pass; however, they put rocks in the bag and take the marbles for themselves. This leads to their partner being shot in the head.

The last important aspect is the ending. You may think that the end of the game is just the end of the show, but this is not true. For most of the final episode, we begin to see the winner’s life after the fact, and how they feel. We also see who the real creator of the game is, and at the very end we see the possible cliff hanger to a season two.

Overall I think this was a really great series. This show really does a great job of picking the right mood, set, costumes and cast. If you’re looking for something to do during break, this is the perfect series to binge.