Squid Game: Unleashed is a fun game and a terrible adaptation

Squid Game: Squid GameA nightmare of pop culture, deadly schoolyard games in which players compete to survive and win, er, a vast cash prize as a reward — if they make it through. In Unleashed, a new mobile spinoff of the streamer’s fledgling gaming initiatives, however, those are enjoyable games. That makes for a bizarre experience that removes practically everything interesting about Squid Game in favor of turning it into a multiplayer party game.

With a Squid Game skin on it, Unleashed is kind of like Fall Guys. You face off against 31 other players in three random games from the show, such as ‘red light, green light’ and crossing a bridge of glass. Slowly, the other players are killed, and at the end, one wins a ton of cash.

The game largely mirrors the aesthetics of the show. The game features a ton of characters, a mix of show picks and some new ones, and while the aesthetic is cartoonish, it still gets pretty violent, with players being shot for breaking rules or crushed under some obstacle. We have the usual green track suits and masked guards.

However, the ties to the show are mostly skin-deep. No element of the story and if you have not seen the series, you will not have the faintest idea of what internal torment many of the characters pass through

Indeed, quite a few of the aspects that help Unleashed be a pretty cool mobile game are also what ensure that it’s not a worthy representation of the spirit of Squid Game. For minimizing frustration, even with most these games have respawning. So: even if you lose out at “red light, green light” and get blasted by a squadron, your game doesn’t end there. It just fetches in a race, to be one of a specific amount of players that quicken above the line and continue on.

Squid Game

In the same vein, you can knock them all out in a couple of minutes each. This is perfect for playing short bursts on the move; you don’t usually want to be caught in a 30 minute multiplayer game on your phone. However, when you combine things like the short time and the respawn, this totally removes wherever the tension is needed in Squid Game’s attraction.

Worked out, despite the complete lack of in-app purchases (Unleashed is free to Netflix subscribers, and free to non-subscribers for a limited time), as if it were a typical free-to-play title. You make cash by winning matches and achieving other goals, which you spend on unlocking new characters, costumes, and emotes. Whenever I log on there are an obscene number of pop-ups and notifications informing me that I just earned a new zombie outfit or that a holiday event or something is happening. I literally got a twerk emote this morning.