For this article, let’s assume that Squid Game was a Nepali Series. What childhood games would be featured on the show? Hmmm I wonder!

1. London Stop

The Nepali version of red light, green light fits in perfectly for the first game. We will have a similar huge Nepali doll-like robot dressed in Guniyo Choli and instead of singing ‘Mugunghwa Koci Pieot Seumnida’ she spells out L O N D O N London S T O P stop, London Stop and turns around. If the robot detects anyone moving, they are eliminated right way in a similar fashion as the original Korean series. Easy!

2. Chakra Judai / Ghuitro

Do you remember that candy with a thread in between? The one you could buy four of from a shop for a rupee? You as a contestant will be given one such candy, which you will spin using the thread and will have to battle it out with someone you choose randomly. The contestant whose candy breaks during the battle is eliminated. This game would be interesting because there is a chance of both players getting eliminated. This game fits for the second challenge perfectly because it touches the idea of a sweet/ candy just like the second game (honey comb sweet) in the original series.

3. Seven Stones/ Itta Dhalai

We need a game like tug of war with players divided in two teams for the third game and none other than Itta Dhalai would be my pick if I was the front man of this year’s Nepali Squid Game! In this game, you first divide the players into even number of teams. Two teams go against each other one at a time. Seven Stones are then stacked on top of each other and each team gets a chance to knock the stacked stones using a pebble big enough to strike them down. A keeper is placed behind the stacked stones and if he catches the pebble while a player of the opponent team strikes, the whole team is eliminated on the spot. In case a player manages to knock the stones down, the opponent team must strike each player of the team that knocked the stacked stones down using a chungi! But if the team manages to dodge the chungi and restack the stones, they win. The losing team is then eliminated with a gunshot to the head! Now that’s way more fun than the boring old ‘Tug of war’.

4. Rubber games

Eventhough we could have marble games similar to the original series for this episode, I would rather love to see the games that we played with rubber bands back in the days. With a similar pairing as in the original episode for the 4th game, each player would be given 100 rubber bands each instead of 10 marbles. The one who steals all 100 from his/her opponent gets to live. The players can play any game using the rubbers as they wish. Some of them would be jod ki bijod, chungi, aula chirai and more (which I don’t know the names of but would sound weirder than ‘aula chirai’, even if I did!).

5. Bomb Blast

If you are a 90s kid, you definitely played this game. It’s original version is played with a chungi and the last to survive without getting hit by a chungi wins. However, to spice it up for this year’s Nepali Squid Game, we shall have every player strapped with a bomb that’s connected to a timer. If you manage to strike any player with the chungi, then his/ her bomb sets off immediately and as a bonus your timer stops and the bomb strapped to you gets disengaged. You can now continue the game if you like killing people without any fear of yourself blowing up or you can choose to just step aside and wait for the final game. Any player who hasn’t managed to disengage their bombs until the timer ends, gets blown to pieces.

6. Dhyakki

For the final, I, as the front man, would like to introduce Dhyakki. It is similar to squid game in a sense that the playing field is drawn with chalk and you have to hop through the boxes with one leg without the other one touching the floor. The boxes are numbered. Then you toss a flat stone, called dhyakki or dhyak into them. The player hops through those shapes on one leg and collects the dhyakki. Tossing the dhyakki outside the shapes disqualifies the player.