“Green light, you can run and stop now”, do you dare to play? The Squid Game: The Experience arrives in Madrid. The immersive experience based on the most watched Netflix series will be available from October 24 to January 7 in Ibercaja Delicias Space by the hand of LETSGO.
As soon as you enter, you are already in the game. Everything is full of references to the series to feel like player no. 456, from the decorated until merchandising for the most fans. Guards dressed in red overalls guard the entrance and once you cross it, there is no turning back. The groups are 48 people, but don’t worry, they promise us that this time they will have mercy on us and we will all get out of the game alive.
They give each of us a bib with our player number —it’s my turn on 34—and a digital bracelet to record our score. They also make us a photo for the ranking that will be displayed on the screens. With the preparations ready, we enter a room with bunk beds that immediately transports you to the bedroom of the series and makes every pore of your skin crawl.
There is a countdown and when the counter reaches zero, a man with a suit, briefcase and with a sinister smile explains the rules of the game to us and The Leader, on screen, gives us a warm welcome.
The game tests
We move on to the first test: the gangway. Ordered in rows, we have to memorize in turns a sequence of tiles that light up red or green, and then go through those that light up green. If you step wrong, you’re out.
At the end of each test, depending on whether you passed it or not, you go through a lathe that records the score. I was always good at memorizing sequence games, so, at the moment, I am in the good half of the table, I am 13th with eleven points.
In total there are five tests and, although some are like in the series, others have been adapted to our culture and imagination but maintaining the essence. Therefore, the next test is the petanque and, although at first I think that I’m too Z for this game, I get my ball to almost touch the pin.
However, In the squid game, not only ingenuity and talent are useful, but also mischief and betrayal, and the contestant who was behind me—and with whom I had promised an alliance—throws her ball to hit mine and push it away. In the end, neither she nor I won the test, so we have to record the score on the red lathe, but I remain in 15th place.
For the next test, the ropethey divide us into two teams. Each one has to pull a rope by moving a ribbon. Whoever gets the bar to advance the most meters wins. Although my team has everything to win – it seems that we have the strongest players and The Body Pump is becoming noticeable in my arms—, The one from the other team manages to advance a few more centimeters. Even so, I am still in the good half of the table, in 18th place.
Undoubtedly, the test that I and everyone were most looking forward to was that of the iconic red light, green light dollalso known as the english chick. And yes, in this test, everything is recreated just as in the series.
The approach is easy, every time the doll turns and says “green light”, we can move forward, and when it says “red light” and turns again to watch us, we have to be completely still. I try not to move my eyelashes and I manage to get to the end so I pass my bracelet through the green turnstile and I manage to climb a few places in the ranking to 15th position.
revenge
The last test is the game of chairsonly instead of sitting down when the music stops, they will announce a figure—square, umbrella, star, triangle, circle (a wink with the same figures as in the cookie test that appears in the series)—and we have to place ourselves in it.
The first time, umbrella, I get it right, but two other players, one of them the petanque girl, try to take my place. If “in the game of thrones you win or you die”, in the squid game too, so, since there can only be one left, I come because of the petanque and I manage to stay in my place.
However, there are more elimination rounds, and in the last one, the finalists, of which I am unfortunately not among, have to spin on a giant piggy bank while the music plays. When this is over, The last one to support their hand wins.
Throughout the game, a boy with a beard and glasses who had managed to win all the tests has always gone first. But anything is possible in the squid game and it’s not how you start, but how you finish, so the poor little ant winner finally loses, and another player wins.
The final decision
In the end, you have to make a decision: keep him with a super prize and the rest of us leave empty-handed, or that we all win a small gift. If the series teaches us anything, it is the criticism of the capitalist, selfish and individualistic world, so, of course, the winner kept his prize and the rest of us came back with a “the important thing is to participate.”
Interestingly, a group played before us and yes, Their winner also left them empty-handed. So, moral: if in the end we are all going to die, it is better to have fun while.
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