Many of us are waiting with bated breath for the second season of Squid Game, but DU colleges have gone one step further this fest season and included the wildly popular Korean survival thriller series in their rosters.

“It’s so delightfully wicked, plus the games are just too cool. I actually Googled how I can be a part of the reality show they spun off from it,” confesses Saniya Jain, a first-year student of BCom (Hons) at Hansraj College, adding, “I was disheartened to know participants must be over 21 whereas I’m only 18. So when I found out that fests have competitions based on this series, I immediately made a list of all the colleges that I need to visit this fest season!”

At the recently concluded fest of Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women (IGDTUW), over 300 participations came in for the event. “Every time someone was eliminated, we used a fake gun to tag them,” laughs Laaiva, a third-year students of BTech (Computer Science), adding, “The highlight was making the props. For the cookie cutter game, where you have to trace out a circle or umbrella based on a drawing, we made cardboard cutouts of those and brought safety pins for participants to cut them with.”

The attraction to the morbid but entertaining series has caught the fancy of the organisers of Shivaji College’s upcoming fest, Vibrations, too. “Naam dekhkar hi interest ban jata hai, and it plays a vital role in upping the participation of students vis-à-vis regular dumb charades,” says Anshaj Madaan, a final-year student of BCom (Prog) and member of the student organising body. “The games would be fun and harmless. The idea is to feel less stressed about internals, end sem exams, life after college or anything else.”

Watching recreations of Squid Game on Instagram inspired Manisha Singh, a final-year BA (Hons) Psychology student at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, and the head of the college’s organising committee, to adopt it for their fest Tarang ’24. “The Red Light Green Light game and the task of assembling objects based on an images flashing on their screens are some of the tasks that will be based on an elimination system and will continue over two days,” she says.