The world of TV has changed drastically over the past few years with streaming services, new shows on Hulu and Netflix, and more. There are plenty of great TV shows to watch now that have nothing to do with video games. Here are 15 TV Shows Like Squid Game you need to watch.
series like squid game netflix is a topic that has been created to help people find new TV shows similar to the Squid Game.
Squid Game, Netflix’s newest Korean drama, has captivated viewers with its mix of societal critique, high-stakes thrills, and moral dilemmas. The popular show follows a group of adults who are severely in debt as they fight for real riches in a series of deadly children’s games. Squid Game is a common concept done well, which means you’re in luck if you’re searching for more tales like it; the “deadly competition” trope is very prevalent.
However, with just nine episodes, the thrill wears off quickly, leaving you wanting more. There are plenty of other programs to keep you busy till the second season premieres. Let’s have a look at 15 TV programs that are similar to Squid Games and that you should absolutely watch.
1. Borderland Alice (2020-)
While Squid Game takes place on a remote island, Alice in Borderland expands on the deadly game idea by placing it in an abandoned Tokyo. The protagonists of Alice in Borderland, like the main characters in Squid Game, are ordinary individuals with no special abilities. They become more sympathetic and their travels more fascinating precisely because they lack authority.
While hiding in a subway toilet, Arisu and his two closest friends, Chota and Karube, are being chased by police. When they leave, they find that Tokyo’s entire population has gone, leaving the city desolate. They will then be forced to play in life-or-death games in which the only option is to win; those who refuse will be killed by the game’s creator.
Snowpiercer (2020 – ) is the second film in the Snowpiercer series.
Despite the fact that Chris Evans’ 2013 film Snowpiercer was far from perfect, the TV show makes significant progress in establishing its characters. The narrative follows the characters as they are stranded on board a train transporting humanity’s last survivors in a post-apocalyptic planet consumed by ice. The series features white-knuckle survival action that is heightened by its social undertones, similar to Squid Game.
Seven years after the world has degenerated into a frozen wasteland, Snowpiercer is set. It follows humanity’s surviving members as they travel across the world on a huge, constantly moving train. Class struggle, social injustice, and the politics of survival are all questioned in this compelling television adaptation.
3. Welcome to your new home (2020-)
Sweet Home, one of Netflix’s most popular Korean dramas, portrays a group of people who must overcome their selfish tendencies and work together in order to survive. Despite the fact that it has a large cast of characters, including Squid Game, it manages to divide its time between them all and offer adequate development for everyone despite its short 10-episode length.
Hyun, a lonely high school student who lost his whole family in a tragic accident, is forced to leave his home and enter a new world where monsters are trying to wipe humanity out. Now he must fight against all obstacles in order to save what is left of humanity before it is too late.
4. Lost (2004–2010) is a television series that aired from 2004 to 2010.
Due to its enduring success in the mid-aughts, Lost is a dystopian survival thriller that need no introduction. It isn’t completely focused on a battle royale gaming series. However, it takes place on an island, similar to Squid Game, where a group of individuals is confronted with unforeseen challenges that force them to question their morality.
48 people are stranded on a remote island in the South Pacific after surviving a horrific aircraft crash. Among the survivors are Doctor Jack, now-freed prisoner Kate, one-hit-wonder rock musician Charlie, Iraqi war veteran Sayid, and a weird man called Locke. For a time, their only goal is to stay alive, but they soon realize that their meeting was much more than a coincidence, and that each of them has a role to play in solving the island’s secrets.
Liar Game (2007–2010) is the fifth film in the Liar Game series.
Liar Game is a deception game in which players must either lie their way to a hundred million yen or lose and owe the same amount of money. This series is more focused on logic and reasoning than Squid Game, which includes activities that need both brain and strength, but it will still be fascinating for novice viewers.
Nao, a trusting and naive girl, is lured into the mysterious Liar Game, in which players are handed large amounts of money and then must swindle each other out of them. Only a few people become rich, while the bulk of people spend the rest of their lives in debt. A previous teacher is Nao’s opponent. She seeks his advice, relieved, but she is tricked into giving him all of her money.
Nao is in a panic, unsure how to get the money back and get out of debt. When she learns that a great con artist, Shinichi Akiyama, is about to be released from prison, she contacts him for help. Akiyama grudgingly agrees to be her game’s right-hand man.
As the two go through the game’s more difficult levels, it becomes clear that their participation was no accident.
6.3% (from 2016 to 2023)
The plot of Squid Game has a lot in common with the Brazilian series 3 percent. To begin, it is set in a world where there are major social divides and the poor are forced to take a series of tests in order to gain a place among the elite. Furthermore, the program has a protagonist who, despite adversity, retains a strong sense of justice, even when pushed to the ultimate test.
This Brazilian dystopian drama is set in a near-future So Paulo, where twenty-year-old residents of the impoverished Inland compete for admittance to a utopian Offshore society via The Process, a difficult and often deadly series of exams that only 3% of candidates complete.
The Purge (2018–2019) is number seven.
The Purge’s drama, like that of Squid Game, isn’t confined to a brutal survival game. Rather, it goes deeper, exposing the inner workings of its characters and digging into the consequences of their decisions in the face of grave peril.
The government has sanctioned an annual 12-hour period during which any and every unlawful behavior, including murder, becomes permissible in a crime-ridden and crowded America. It is impossible to contact the police. Hospitals stop assisting patients.
It’s a night when the general public self-regulates without concern for the consequences. One family tries to determine who they will become when a stranger knocks on their door on this night of violence and pandemic crime.
When a thief breaks into James Sandin’s gated community during the yearly lockdown, he sets off a sequence of events that threatens to tear a family apart. It’s now up to James, Mary, and their children to make it through the night without becoming the monsters they’re hiding from.
Black Mirror (season 8) (2011- )
Each new season brings with it a burst of social media fervor — and with good reason. Black Mirror has an amazing ability to amplify our technological fears and concerns to the point where they resemble nightmare stuff.
Technology has changed almost every aspect of our life in the past decade without enabling us to stop and think. A plasma screen, a monitor, or a smartphone may be found in every home, every workplace, and every palm—a gloomy mirror of our twenty-first-century lives. Black Mirror is a contemporary British anthology series that includes tales that explore our shared apprehensions about the modern world.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2012)
This list would be incomplete without The Hunger Games, one of the most popular and successful contemporary renditions of the “deadly competition” cliché. The Hunger Games, like Squid Game, succeeds by addressing contemporary social problems via its terrible premise.
Panem, a dystopian totalitarian state, is split into 12 districts and the Capitol. Each year, two teenage delegates from each district are chosen by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. The televised games are aired throughout Panem and are half amusement and partly severe punishment for a past rebellion.
The 24 contestants are forced to destroy their opponents in front of the Panem residents. Katniss volunteers to take Prim, Katniss’ sixteen-year-old younger sisterposition ,’s as District 12’s female representative. She and Peeta, her male counterpart, are up against bigger, more powerful representatives who have spent their whole lives preparing for this.
Even while it isn’t technically a TV program, it is nevertheless a film series with a plot that is quite similar to Squid Game.
Invasion of the High-Rise (2021- )
High-Rise Invasion deviates from the usual “death competition” concept in that it is uncertain whether or not this is a true competition. At the end of the day, the goals are the same: survival at any costs.
Yuri Honjou, 16, trembles in fear and confusion as she flees a masked attacker after seeing a man’s skull being split open with an ax, only to find herself trapped in an abandoned building with every door mysteriously locked. Yuri climbs to the rooftop in search of a way out, but she finds herself in a lifeless world surrounded by high-rise buildings. Despite her sorrow, Yuri is eager to locate and rescue her brother after learning that he is trapped in this strange world as well.
However, she soon learns that there are other masked murderers in the area, all ready to scare their newest victims and satisfy their sickest desires, leaving Yuri to wonder whether they will survive.
Sense8 is number eleven (2015-2018)
This is a program in which people from all over the globe get together mentally. This organization is fighting for survival against others who are afraid of them. While there are no tasks for them to complete like in Squid Game, the narrative follows a similar path of a mishmash of characters joining together in an attempt to escape.
Sense8 is a story about eight strangers from various cultures and parts of the globe. In the aftermath of a tragic death that they all see via what they perceive as dreams or visions, they all find themselves becoming mentally and emotionally connected.
While the eight try to figure out how and why this connection formed and what it means, a mysterious man called Jonas tries to help them. Meanwhile, Whispers is pursuing them, using the same sensate ability to get full access to a sensate’s mind (thoughts/sight) by gazing into their eyes. Each episode focuses on the people’ views as they engage with one another, delving deeper into their pasts and what connects and divides them.
Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor (2007–2011) is a Japanese television series that aired from 2007 to 2011.
Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, like Squid Game, features a slacker protagonist who is badly in debt and struggling to make ends meet. That’s when he stumbles upon an underground bet that seems to provide a ray of hope but actually drags him further into the abyss.
Kaiji Itou is a miserable squatter who spends his days drinking beer and stealing hubcaps—until a former colleague deceives him. Kaiji is given a questionable chance to participate in an illegal underground gambling business aboard a cruise liner when he is unable to pay his friend’s huge debt on his own. As he gets pulled headlong into a life-threatening roller coaster of mind games, dishonesty, and deceit, this proves to be nothing more than the beginning of his new horrific existence.
Gyakkyou Burai is based on Nobuyuki Fukumoto’s famous gambling manga series’ first volume. Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor follows our unlucky protagonist as he battles not only other people, but also the mysteries of his own mind. When people’s backs are against the wall, the worst elements of human nature emerge, and the most frightening dangers of all are avarice, paranoia, and the human survival instinct itself, as Kaiji learns the hard way.
13. The Diary of the Future (2011-2013)
The anime series “The Future Diary” is my second suggestion for “Squid Game” fans. Yukiteru Amano is a 14-year-old loner who spends the majority of his time dispassionately recording events that occur around him on his mobile phone “diary.” Two fictional characters, Dues ex Machina, the “god of time and space,” and Murmur, Dues’ naughty servant, are his only companions.
Yukiteru’s life takes a strange turn when his diary starts to record events in advance and Dues reveals that he is not completely fictional, and a tragic turn when his diary predicts his own death. Yukiteru learns that he has been put into a survival game to choose who would replace Dues as the god of time and space, in which he will compete against 11 other people who also have diaries that predict the future in different ways.
Yukiteru does, however, have one strong ally: Yuno Gasai, a fellow student who, although being a Future Diary bearer herself, is dedicated to protecting Yukiteru at any costs. She’s also an obsessive, perhaps crazy stalker who keeps track of Yukiteru’s every move in her own Future Diary, which she keeps in 10-minute intervals.
The Society is number fourteen (2019)
Do you want to binge-watch another ensemble science fiction cast on Netflix? Consider The Society, a film about a group of adolescents who experience one of history’s largest mass disappearances.
When a busload of high school kids travels to Connecticut, they are forced to return due to a storm. Regrettably, each adult has gone from their community by the time they return. To solve this enormous puzzle and restore order to the world, they’ll have to work together.
W: Two Worlds (15. W) (2016)
W is a series that relies on its unpredictability, with a unique narrative and a heavy focus on sci-fi/fantasy themes. The letter “W” in this play alludes to the collision of two worlds: the real world and a virtual world enclosed inside a webtoon.
This Korean drama really comes into its own when the action switches to a mystical web-toon world, delivering something totally distinct. While the rules of the world are explained, the characters grow and each episode offers something new and interesting. It’s an unexpected thrill ride from start to finish that will keep you guessing until the very end.
The story of the webtoon starts with Kang Chul, a beautiful and intelligent young girl who becomes famous after winning a shooting competition. However, his fame is short-lived as a mystery attacker murders his family and he is wrongfully condemned. The author’s daughter is Yeon-Joo. She goes to her father’s workplace to find out what happened to him when he went missing. She is pulled into W’s other world, where she meets the protagonist, Kang Chul.
The series like squid game and alice in borderland is a list of 15 TV shows that you need to watch if you liked the video game, Squid Game.
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