In Squid GameSchool games turn into nightmares as players compete to survive and, if they're lucky, win a huge cash prize. but in Releaseda new mobile spin-off that's part of the streamer's budding gaming efforts, those games are fun. It's a strange experience that takes away much of the appeal of Squid Game in the service of making a multiplayer party game.
Released it's something like Fall Guys but in a Squid Game envelope. You compete against 31 other players in three random games taken from the show, such as “red light, green light” or running across a glass bridge. Little by little, other players die and in the end one wins a large amount of money.
Aesthetically, the game mainly follows the spectacle. There are plenty of characters to play as (some taken from the show, some new to the game) and while there's a cartoon aesthetic, things still get gory, with players getting shot for breaking the rules or crushed by some obstacle. There are the familiar green tracksuits and masked guards.
But the connections to the show are really only superficial. There's no story element, so if you haven't seen the show, you'll have no idea what kind of personal anguish many of the characters go through.
In fact, many of the elements that make up Released a pretty fun mobile game is also what prevents it from being a good adaptation of what Squid Game it is about. To reduce frustration, most games have respawn. So even if you fail “red light, green light” and a guard shoots you, the game isn't over. It simply slows you down in a race to be one of a predetermined number of players to cross the finish line and move on.
Likewise, all games can be completed in a few minutes. This is great for playing short sessions on the go; Being stuck in a 30-minute multiplayer game on your phone usually sucks. But when you put elements like the short runtime and respawn together, it completely erases all of the tension that's so central to Squid GameThe attractiveness.
And despite not having in-app purchases… Released It's completely free for Netflix subscribers and, for a limited time, for non-subscribers; It's still structured like a typical free-to-play game. You earn cash by winning matches and completing various objectives, which is used to unlock new characters, costumes, and emotes. Every time I log in, I get a surprising number of pop-ups and notifications telling me that I just unlocked a zombie costume or that there's a Christmas-themed event. This morning they gave me a twerking gesture.
Yes, now I can make Kang Sae-byeok, whose death was one of the most tragic moments of season 1, twerk in the middle of a deadly obstacle course.
Released It's not a bad game. In many ways, it's a clever reinterpretation of online party games for mobile devices. But, like most Netflix expansions of the Squid Game universe, it also completely misses the point of the show. It's something like what fortnite it's for the original movie battle royale: A fun and colorful take on a brutal and heartbreaking story.
fortnite largely avoided tonal dissonance by creating a cartoon-like multiversal world that's far from an island full of kids killing their classmates. Releasedon the other hand, it is another part of Scrux game – one who doesn't seem to understand why the series exists.
