How to Host a Squid Game Party! Game Decor & Costume Ideas!
Want To Host a Squid Game Themed Party?
As THE most popular Netflix series EVER, it’s no surprise that people would be interested in hosting a Squid Game themed event! After all, the world was obsessed with this show! But how do you host squid games without having to kill your guests and how do you play to the end if you don’t have as many people needed for team rounds? Moreover, how do you make a squid themed party more family-friendly? Those were the questions I was faced with when my husband told me he wanted to throw a squid game party. Read on for my tips and ideas!
Obviously, a Squid Game themed party revolves around games. Luckily, the game concepts are simple enough for anyone to play and for anyone to execute. Popular amongst school kids, the games featured in the movie mostly take some patience, luck and minimal skill. Since it’s been a while since most of you probably watched the movie, let me remind you of the
6 games featured in the show:
1). Sugar cookie cutout
(A round cookie in a tin with embossed shape in the middle must be carefully cut out with a needle without cracking the cookie and before the time limit). The cookie is called a dalgona cookie or sometimes called a honeycomb cookie.
How to: Purchase the tin kits here. It will include everything from the base from which your cookie is formed, to the lid from which it is concealed (so your guests blindly choose their indentation shape), to the needle that you poke the cookie out with.
Use this 2-ingredient recipe to make the sugar cookie. The hardest part is timing the inner shape indentation piece just right and taking it out before it cools and sets in there permanently. But don’t worry if this happens like it did with my first round, you can crack and crumble it, add it back to the pan and start over. This will overly brown your resulting cookie but it’s not important to get the color correct as it’s just about creating the cookie challenge and game. Once your players have blindly chosen their (closed) cookie tin, set the timer and rank who finishes getting their cookie out the fastest before time runs out!
TIP- It’s great to kick off your game series with this one since it doubles as an ice breaker. Contestants can easily chat while sitting and sharing some laughs while competing AND not even breaking a sweat! 😆.
TIP! Motivate players by pre-event asking adult contestants to each agree to pitch in a set amount of cash! Each of our adult contestants put in $20 each making a grand prize total of $120. While far from the movie’s 2.2 billion won amount, you’ll be surprised how (any) lump sum of money will incite the greed out of all your guests and increase the stakes for everyone! (You could also punish your guests along the way by requiring losers to drink after each round which we did not do because a couple of us were allergic to alcohol and likely could have actually died playing this version of Squid Games). lol.
Family-friendly TIP! We had adults competing against one another and found ways to get kids involved throughout the day. Most kids haven’t seen the movie and will simply enjoy watching parents get silly playing kiddie games and or have fun playing a 2nd round themselves. Because the cookie cutting game involves a needle though, you can ask the kids to judge while the parents compete and have them provide live commentary. OR, you could encourage them to try and draw one of the iconic movie characters while you do this particular game.
2). Marble game
There are tons of ways to play and you could replace marbles with whatever small balls you have around the house. In the movie though, a player holds a number of marbles in their hand. The other player guesses if the number is odd or even. If the player guesses correctly, he gets the same number of marbles as he’s holding (his wager).
Because we were using a ranking and point system to prevent having to eliminate players from playing further rounds, we kept score and didn’t let players “die off.” Also, because we didn’t have marbles, we decided to tweak this by gathering small balls to roll across the lawn. Whoever got it closest to the end point (wall in our case), without actually hitting the wall won and got the high score. If you hit the wall you got disqualified and subtract points off your total score. Person with the most points at the end of all game rounds wins!
3). Glass floor
In the movie, players had to cross a glass bridge but some of the glass squares would cause the player to fall through. In our version, paper squares were laid down and the backs read real glass or fake glass. “Fall” or “safe” could have been written too and instead of paper squares, cardboard boxes (some stable with something under them to be able to hold a human up vs some empty so the person falls when they stand on top would be great too). But we didn’t have enough cardboard boxes nor did we want to store that many for the game.😅.
TIP- to decide on order of who goes first, you could randomly draw numbers, give priority to those who ranked best from the last game, or have the kids each represent a # and have the parents each choose a child to find out what order they go in.
4). Red light green light
Probably the most memorable and iconic squid game from the movie (thanks to the unforgettable larger-than-life, head swiveling doll leader), is a fun one for all ages to try! Again, we had the adults compete against one another. Kids took turns saying the famous green light red light song in Korean (while dressed in soldier red) and holding a soldier (water-filled) gun. Each child was assigned an adult to watch and was instructed to squirt them if they saw them move when they weren’t supposed to. The power evidenced in these kids’ eyes when we told them all this was ridiculously scary! haha This was the of course, the kids’ favorite part of the party!
TIP, draw a chalk line for start and finish. Have only one child take turns at a time and say the famous phrase at a time, “Mugunghwa kkoci pieot seumnida.” And find water guns at your local dollar store! Next time, I’ll not only have the kids dress in red like the Squid Game soldiers but I’ll have the adults all dress in green like the Squid Game contestants!
5). Tug of war
We opted to skip this game in fear of someone getting hurt. But it can easily be replicated with any rope and a soft landing spot (grass or sand).
6) Squid game
It’s a game of tag with offense, defense and teams. We had a small, unbalanced male to female group, so making teams didn’t make sense and being that this was a more complicated game to explain the rules for, you may want to skip it too. For full rules and explanation, click here.
How To Create the Ambiance
Here’s a link for a kid’s red soldier costume, here are our masks, here’s a kiddo green soldier costume and here’s an adult green soldier costume if you wanna get real extra! Having these costumes at the party will bring the theme to life when you can’t exactly replicate all the movie sets. Wouldn’t this theme party be so fun for Halloween??
And if you want to decorate, go with a black white and red theme. Check out the themed balloons here. You can also easily create gift bags or backdrops by drawing in or taping the simple triangle circle and square symbols.
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