Shows Like Squid Game

Loaded with mystery, isolation, and high stakes, Severance follows people who’ve surgically separated their work and personal lives. Their “innies” toil deep in the bowels of Lumon Industries, while their “outies” enjoy total ignorance of their 9-to-5 grind. Except Lumon’s creepy micromanagers tend to violate work/life balance, and outies won’t let innies quit.

Stream Severance on Apple TV+.

Sure, this Spanish sensation is a heist story, but a heist is a zero-sum game—just like Squid Games’ challenges—that the crew, mostly isolated within the Royal Mint of Spain, must win or die trying. One big difference, though, is that the crew’s leader, The Professor, is the one playing crafty games.

Stream Money Heist on Netflix.

This just-released Money Heist adaption tells the same story as the original, but with a few tweaks and twists. And the biggest twist (this is not a spoiler) is the setting: a unified North and South Korea (that’s not as harmonious as it sounds).

Stream Money Heist: Korea—Joint Economic Area on Netflix.

In this one-season-and-done series, high school graduates compete in an annual series of perilous dares to be the sole winner of a $50,000 prize. Winning is also a chance to escape their small-town Texas lives, while losing could mean death. Whatever happened to garden-variety college prep courses?

Stream Panic on Amazon Prime Video.

While hiding from the cops, three Japanese slackers are transported to an alternate, deserted version of Tokyo, where they must compete in a series of stressful timed games in which lasers ventilate the losers’ heads.

Stream Alice in Borderland on Netflix.

An octopus, forced to wear a squid’s name, lives in a place called Bikini Bottom but has no pants—and he’s tortured daily by the silly games of a sponge and a starfish who do have pants. It’s dystopia under the sea!

Stream Spongebob Squarepants on Paramount+ (seasons 1–12) or Amazon Prime Video (seasons 1–6).