The dust may finally be settling on Squid Game season three, but for those who can't quite seem to shake the dystopian Korean drama's games out of their heads, we thought it high-time to reflect on the games themselves that the players participated in throughout the show's third outing. From the newly-introduced game 'Hide-and-Seek' to 'Jump Rope', these are games — can we really call a matter of life-or-death a game? — unlike any others. Here's a re-cap of all of the games played in Squid Game season three.
Episode 1: 'Keys and Knives'
Game of the Episode: 'Hide-and-Seek'
Starting in the manner in which they aimed to continue, the games of season three began with a chilling reinvention of a childhood classic, 'Hide-and-Seek'. The rules are simple: contestants are divided into two teams by the random draw of coloured balls: Blue and Red. The Blue Team, armed with keys, must either evade detection or orchestrate a daring escape within thirty minutes. Their adversaries, the Red Team, are equipped with knives and tasked with hunting down the Blues.
The stakes are clear: failure to eliminate at least one opponent results in immediate execution for the would-be hunters. A macabre twist allows players, before the game begins, to negotiate their fate by swapping roles, which is essentially an invitation to betray or be betrayed before the first move is made.
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Episode 2: 'The Starry Night'
Game of the Episode: 'Hide-and-Seek'
As the stakes get higher in the inaugural game of Hide-and-Seek, so too does the tension. The Blue Team’s keys are revealed to be of three distinct shapes — circle, triangle, and square — necessitating a rare cooperation or ruthless theft to secure all three and unlock the final door to salvation.
Episode 3: 'It's Not Your Fault'
Game of the Episode: 'Jump Rope'
The innocence of playground games is once again subverted in Squid Game season three's lethal iteration of Jump Rope.
Players must traverse a bridge while leaping over a swinging rope, all under the unblinking gaze of Young-hee and Cheol-su. The challenge is as much about timing and nerve as it is about endurance: to pass, players must reach the other side within 20 minutes. The order in which they cross the bridge within the time limit, however, is entirely at their own discretion.
Episode 4: '222'
Game of the Episode: 'Jump Rope'
As the fourth episode commences, the Jump Rope ordeal persists, but with a devastating twist: the number 222 — Kim Jun-hee’s baby, arguably not the most adept contestant — must now bear her mother’s number, making the stakes all the more confronting and daunting for the other players, who are then pitted against each other and a baby.
Episode 5: '○△□'
Game of the Episode: 'Sky Squid Game'
In true Squid Game fashion, the penultimate game is a test of both strategy and savagery. Players ascend a sequence of geometric pillars — square, triangle, and circle — each serving as the stage for a brutal pushing contest. Survival demands that at least one contestant be eliminated — by virtue of being pushed by other competitors, of course — per round.
Each round is governed by a strict 15-minute limit, initiated only when contestants press a button. The final survivors on the circle pillar are crowned the game’s victors, but those who fail to push (and therefore eliminate) any players at all within the 15 minutes will find that all of them are then eliminated.
Episode 6: 'Humans Are...'
Game of the Episode: 'Sky Squid Game'
The season's finale unfolds atop the Sky Squid Game’s final pillar, where the remaining contestants grapple with the ultimate question of humanity — how much of themselves has to be sacrificed to survive in a world engineered for spectacle and annihilation. For the faint of heart, Squid Game is not — and in keeping with the life-or-death nature of the engineered social experiment, the games in the hit series' final outing are not only cunning, they also reflect the deepest and darkest idiosyncrasies of the human condition.
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Naomi May is a seasoned culture journalist and editor with over ten years’ worth of experience in shaping stories and building digital communities. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard, where she worked across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Digital Editor at ELLE Magazine and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others. Naomi is also the host of the ELLE Collective book club.
