Ranking the ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Games

Sarah Shachat
·2 min read
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We shouldn’t be allowed to call “Squid Game” dystopian now that Netflix has built the torment nexus, but the sheer scale of the streamer’s new reality series, “Squid Game: The Challenge,” is impressive. Big reality elimination challenge shows like “Survivor,” “Big Brother,” and “The Amazing Race” feature contestants in the double, not triple, digits. While “Squid Game: The Challenge” settles on squibs instead of actual bullets, the logistical hurdles involved in blowing up narrative sequences and making them practical as games — for hundreds of players — are legion. 

Filmed over 16 days at a series of six interconnected studios in London, “Squid Game: The Challenge” features representations of the unnervingly cheerful “Squid Game” work of production designer Chae Kyoung-sun and the iconic costumes created by designer Jo Sang-gyeong, as well as inclusion of composer Jung Jae-il’s score and a penchant for recreating the deliciously painful slo-mo editing of games perfected by editor Nam Na-young. 

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But the artisans on the Korean scripted series worked within the constraints of narrative production. Sequences could be shot in pieces and optimized for the filmmaking and storytelling impact on the pre-selected group of characters the show follows. VFX can support things like the giant piggy bank and the glass bridge (yet to be seen in the reality series), to say nothing of the specificity with which cinematographer Lee Hyeong-deok’s camera and Park Hyeon-soo’s sound team can attack a sequence like the Red Light/Green Light game.

“Squid Game: The Challenge” production designer Mathieu Weekes had to build everything to a degree of functionality that fiction series never have to bother with: from actually making the giant piggy bank (and securing it to the ceiling of the dorm when it weighed over 1,500 pounds) to programming the creepy 13.7-foot tall dollbot that catches players out in Red Light/Green Light. 

“Her head had to turn at a very specific time frame and it had to happen every time,” game designer Ben Norman said of designing the doll. “And the thing we found was that with the size of the head and the speed at which it needed to turn, it had the potential of ripping off if it wasn’t calibrated perfectly! We had to figure out the engineering and work out the parts and motors and figure out not only how to drive it, but how to stop it. We’re talking fractions of a second, it’s so fast.” 

How effective is building out the deadly games from the Hwang Dong-hyuk series in the context of Western reality TV, though, and what are the challenges that the creative team had to overcome in creating them? Below is our ranking of the  “Squid Game: The Challenge” challenges.

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