In a world where Squid Game is comfortably Netflix's most popular show of all-time by far, and everybody in the whole world has seen it or at least heard of it, it's a bit surprising that Liar Game hasn't caught up at least a little bit, especially since Squid Game's creator has openly said that Liar Game was a direct inspiration for it (along with Battle Royale, unsurprisingly).

Probably because it's a pain in the ass to find in the West?

Liar Game is basically like a reverse Squid Game. While the latter is filled to the brim with violence used for shock value, in this one, violence is… forbidden!

Where Squid Game is raw and almost animalistic, Liar Game is reflexive, psychological, methodical. Lots of characters thinking, staring. Lots of dialogue. Lots of double-crossing. Suspenseful music everywhere.

And, contrary to Squid Game, Liar Game actually spends a vast majority of its runtime during the actual games, not showing us weird filler for about half the runtime. I think they could have cut even more of the stuff outside of the games, like the Japanese adaptation did. Doesn't mean it's better though, more on that in reviews for the Japanese adaptation coming up soon-ish (still watching)

Anyway, I guess if these things are about anything, then both Liar Game (through greed) and Squid Game (through both greed and survival) aim to show the ugly side of human nature when faced with difficult choices under immense pressure.

Overall I'd say they are roughly the same quality, but I enjoyed this one more because it's thoughtful instead of shocking, and hella entertaining. Definitely one of the most purely entertaining Korean shows I've watched, even though it's not the best (that would be Kingdom... for now). Also the leads were more charismatic here.

The original manga is leagues ahead of both though. It's actually one of my favorite manga ever. Even nonreaders of the manga could tell where they are deviating… rule of thumb: when it's bad and not making any sense (so basically, mostly everything that happens outside of the LIAR GAME tournament), they're probably deviating!

Now, I'm not sure why they had to change some of the actual games, especially the very first one, that was entirely unnecessary and many of those changes (but not all) introduce some logic problems. And by the final episode they changed so much it was basically a shadow of its former self. But the rest was great!

This show promises two things by the name alone and gives them plenty: lies, and high stakes games.