‘Squid Game:’ the Challenges Ranked From Easiest to Hardest

The final game of season one is Squid Game, which the show is named after.

In the real-life South Korean children’s game, players try to reach a goal zone while their opponents attempt to block them. In the show, each player is equipped with knives to harm their opponent until they can no longer move.

You have a 50/50 chance of survival since it’s one of the few challenges where you’re only up against one other player. Of course, that can be skewed based on your strength and ability to fight versus your opponent’s.

This game is much more in your control than other games, giving you a higher chance of survival.

In Sky Squid Game, the final game of season three, the players are put on a very tall stone structure and told to push at least one player off the structure to their deaths before the time runs out. After one round, they move to another smaller stone structure, and the game is repeated. There are three rounds of this game.

In the show, player 100 and his group of men have the right idea for success: they team up and push out one of the other players each round. However, neither player trusts the alliance, leading to it falling apart.

With nine competitors and only a minimum of three needing to be killed, you have a high chance of survival compared to most of the games. Avoid being the least liked player in the group, keep aware of any backstabbers, and make sure you always have the pole (the only weapon to push people off), and you’ve survived the Sky Squid Game.

In season one, episode six, players are told to pair up before learning they are playing Marbles, which is a game within a game. They are each given a bag of marbles and told they must choose a game to win their opponent’s bag. The winner moves on, the loser dies.

Since most players teamed up with an ally or close friend, this game brutally manipulated their emotions and trust, forcing them to turn on their allies. So there’s a chance you would forfeit to let your partner go through.

If you decide to play, the difficult part is persuading your partner to play a game in which you think you’ll have an advantage. But you may still get lucky and win on a random game, so we’re not putting this game higher on the ranking.

In Mingle, the game shown in season two, episode six, players ride on a carousel until a number is called out. Then, they have run into a room in a group the same size as that number before time runs out.

Of course, this game can quickly become chaotic as players forcefully take people into rooms or drive them out. If you make the right alliances beforehand, you have quite a good chance of succeeding.

Ensure you’re never the odd one out, and you should be fine.

In Sugar Honeycombs — known to many fans as the Dalgona challenge — players must cut a shape out of a biscuit without breaking it. They get shot if they don’t complete the game in 10 minutes or break the biscuit.

Dalgona requires speed and care, which are often two conflicting attributes. Some people may be able to do both, but many won’t be able to handle this game under the pressure of their possible death and hearing people being shot around them.

In Red Light, Green Light, the opening game in seasons one and two, players must run to a finish line in five minutes. The twist is that a rotating doll at the finish line turns sporadically during the game. A player is shot dead if a doll sees them move or they don’t reach the finish line in time.

The pressure is the worst part of this game. Can you keep your cool and stay still when people around you are getting shot? Can you make sure you won’t trip? And there’s a time limit, too, so you can’t be too slow. All these factors culminate in a game that is a lot harder than it seems.

Even with the help of Seong Gi-hun, the show’s lead character, who has played the game before, many people still died in season two. That’s why we’re putting this in the middle of our ranking.

The final 24 players play Jump Rope in season three, episode three. Except that the rope is a giant rotating metal bar, and they have to cross a bridge with a small gap in the center, while avoiding being hit by the bar. If you get hit, you fall off the bridge, which is very high in the air, and die on impact.

It’s a game that looks relatively easy to complete. The two challenges are having enough energy to keep jumping until you reach the end, and timing your jump over the gap in the middle so you don’t get hit by the bar.

But this game can also become more complicated based on the players around you. They can push, stop you from going forward, or tire you out. The biggest threat here is your fellow players, and that unpredictability makes this game much harder.

In season one, episode four, players are asked to form teams to play Tug of War. Two teams are taken to high platforms, chained to a rope, and instructed to pull the other over the edge to their death.

You may be able to trick your way to win, like Gi-hun’s team did in the show, but in most cases, the game is a matter of strength and resilience. You could put in all your energy, but if you’re against a stronger team, there’s no way to survive this.

In the second game of season two, players get into teams of five, are chained together, and have to race another team around a circuit. But at five sections in the circuit, the team has to stop and complete a minigame to move forward. A different member has to do each challenge. You are shot if the other team reaches the finish line first, or neither team makes it to the finish line in time.

This is another game in which you rely on your fellow players and hope your allies have the right skills to complete the five tasks. Plus, some of the minigames are pretty hard, especially under the pressure of death, making this one of the most difficult games to survive.

The first game of season three is Hide and Seek, in which players are randomly assigned to the hiding or seeking team.

Hiders are given one of three types of keys to open doors and have to either survive for 30 minutes or find the exit to escape. Seekers are given knives and must kill at least one hider to pass the game.

If you’re a hider, your chances of winning are slim. Players learn halfway through the game that they need all three keys to get through all the doors to survive and exit the game. But working together makes you a bigger target for the seekers, and the exits seem near impossible to find in the episode since only two players could find them. Your best bet is to find a good hiding spot and hope you can fight any seekers that find you.

The seekers get an advantage of having a knife, but a weapon is useless if you don’t know how to use it, or face someone skilled enough to disarm you. Hyun-ju took out multiple seekers, and she’s probably not the only one.

Although Hide and Seek doesn’t have the highest kill count in the show, over half the players died in it, making it the second toughest game to survive.

In Glass Bridge, players pick jerseys that put them in order from one to 16 and are instructed to cross a bridge of two columns of glass platforms. The catch is that one glass platform in each row is too weak to carry your weight, leading to you falling to your death.

This is the cruellest game of the entire show. While other games test your strength, intelligence, agility, or other skills, this game is pure chance. If you’re anywhere in the top 12 spots, you’ll have to be the luckiest person in the world to get to the end without stepping on the wrong platform.

Players at the back have to hope the other players are willing to be sacrificial lambs, or no one will make it to the finish line. If every game were as difficult as this one, no one would be left alive by the end of the show.