Squid Game Season 2: All The New and Returning Games

This article contains spoilers regarding the games introduced in Squid Game season 2 (but no major spoilers about their results).

Netflix survival drama Squid Game is back for a second season and with it comes a new batch of deadly childrens’ games. Season 1 covered many of the classics like Red Light, Green Light and Tug of War while introducing Western audiences to Korean traditions like Dalgona and Ddakji.

The colorful creativity of these games, combined with the disturbing violence that ends them, helped create a true global phenomenon. Now season 2 faces the challenge of balancing the familiar with the novel when it comes to the games at the center of the titular squid game. Thankfully, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk is up for the challenge. Squid Game season 2 features roughly 10 games within its seven-episode run…sort of. There are only a handful of “official” squid game contests while several occur outside the context of the competition, and one includes five smaller games-within-a-game. You’ll see what we mean.

Read on for our breakdown of every game included in Squid Game season 2.

Game Zero – Rock, Paper, Scissors (Minus One) + Russian Roulette

Before the squid games themselves begin, Squid Game offers up a little appetizer in its first two episodes. When two of Seong Gi-hun’s employees, Mr. Kim and Choi Woo-seok, pursue the mysterious unnamed Recruiter they are captured and made to play a cruel game: Rock, Paper, Scissors (Minus One) + Russian Roulette.

You likely know the rules to rock, paper, scissors already. On a three-count, two players form their right hand into one of three shapes – rock, paper, or scissors – then match up their choice with their opponent’s. Rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, and scissors beat paper. The Recruiter adds two additional elements to this simple game. The first is the “minus one” portion, meaning that players make shapes with both of their hands and then have to subtract one, creating another layer of strategy. The second is Russian Roulette.

One of movie and TV villains’ favorite tools, Russian Roulette involves a gun with six chambers. Five of those chambers will be empty and one will contain a bullet. The chamber will be spun and then the gun pointed at a player’s head and the trigger pulled, with there being a 1-in-6 chance of “losing” i.e. being killed. The Recruiter actually does Mr. Kim and Choi Woo-seok a solid by spinning the chamber before each round. Later on he plays Russian Roulette again with Seong Gi-hun and doesn’t randomize the chamber between rounds for a more dangerous game.

Game One – Red Light, Green Light

Ah, old faithful. Just like season 1, this edition of the games opens with a schoolyard classic. “Red Light, Green Light” sees a group of people assemble on a field and run towards a goal at the end. They can only move, however, when a judge says “green light” and they must stop and stay perfectly still when the judge says “red light.” In Squid Game‘s version of the game, the judge happens to be a mechanical statue of a little girl who instructs guards with guns to kill anyone who moves during the red light portion.

This is the only event from Seong Gi-hun’s first pass at the games that returns for this edition. We would wager that Red Light, Green Light is probably always the opening event for each version of this contest. It’s an effective way to quickly reduce a population of 456 people into something more manageable for future games. Plus, the Front Man’s and his V.I.P.s likely spent a lot of money on that girl statue.

Game Two – Six-Legged Pentathlon

The second game this year is an interesting one that combines five disparate events into one pentathlon. Well actually, it’s more like six events since the overarching race portion of this pentathlon is a challenge in and of itself. Players break off into teams of five and have their legs tied together, creating one six-legged walking entity. The team then has five minutes to make its way around a circular track to safety. But along that path they must complete the five following challenges.

Ddakji

This is another Squid Game classic. Ddakji involves pieces of paper that have been folded into tight shapes (usually a square). While one paper square lies on the ground, a player must throw their paper onto it with enough force to flip it. This is the game that The Recruiter uses to entice the unfortunate into the competition. He did so in season 1 and we see him do it again in season 2.

Flying Stone

This one is pretty straightforward. One tombstone-shaped rock stands on the ground and a player must throw their own stone at it from a distance, knocking it over. It’s notable (to me at least) that one player mimics side-arming South Korean baseball pitcher Kim Byung-hyun as the perfect strategy here.

Gong-gi

Like ddakji and dalgona in season 1, gong-gi is a Korean staple that is likely unfamiliar to most Western viewers. In fact, I had to do some research to understand what was going on. The game is really quite simple though, and this YouTube video in particular helped me get it.

Basically, gong-gi is similar to the games “knucklebones” or “jacks.” Five grape-sized stones begin on the ground. The player picks up one, tosses it into the air, and then picks up the remaining stones on the ground while the first stone is in the air. The player must pick up a different number of remaining stones based on rounds. In round one, they pick up each stone one-by-one while tossing a stone in the air in-between each pickup. In round two, they pick up the four remaining pieces two-by-two. In round three the player picks up three at once and then one. Round four sees all four remaining stones picked up while the first is in the air. Finally, in round five players must toss all the stones in their hand and catch them on the back of their hand.

Imagine doing all of that while a gun is trained on you and a clock ticks down.

Spinning Top

In spinning top, a player wraps a string tightly around a top and then pulls it like a ripcord so that the top reaches the ground and begins spinning.

Jegi

Jegi, short for Jegichagi, is a game similar to “footbag” or “hacky sack.” The goal of the game is to kick an object into the air for a predetermined amount of time or iterations. Jegi only really differs from hacky sack in the material that the central item is made out of. The Jegi is a shuttlecock-like object that is often made from paper wrapped around a small coin.

Game Three – Mingle

Mingle is somewhat similar to the Western game of musical chairs. Players gather on a circular platform that slowly rotates as music plays. When the music stops, a voice calls out a number over the loudspeaker like “5,” “2,” “10,” or “4.” Upon hearing that number, players have a limited amount of time to form a group that consists of that number and run to safety to one of many rooms surrounding the circular platform. Anyone who does not find a group and make it to safety (or makes it to safety with the wrong number) is killed.

All seven episodes of Squid Game season 2 are available to stream on Netflix now.

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