Pyramid Game Review: Viu presents another school thriller Korean drama with a game concept. The story happens in Baekyeon Girls’ High School in Seoul where a new student, Sung Soo-Ji, got transferred. The classroom is far from the main building, and there is only that classroom in that building. When she got to the class, everything was peaceful on the first day but also looked weird in their responses. Later, Sung Soo-Ji got introduced to a game played in their class.
The game’s name is Pyramid Game, and it is played once every month. The game is a voting of the students in the classroom via the app. The game is categorized in alphabetical order A to F. A is the higher rank, and F is the lower zero rank. The member who is in F gets bullied by other rank members once approved by A rank holders. Sung Soo-Ji gets an F and gets bullied at school. How she is overcoming this and how she stops the game and finds the ones who started it is the entire plot of this drama.
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There are many Korean dramas that have school bullying plots. This series is also an addition to it. Most of the school dramas have a bullying story in it. Some dramas are only about bullying at school; some concentrate on romances. But this drama is entirely about bullying in school. Also, this story happens in a girls-only school rather than a mixed one.
Usually, the dramas take mixed school plots, but this one happens in a girls’ school. The story is all about bullying, except in this; they introduced a unique plot as a game. Bullying by the voting system is not seen in Korean dramas. This drama approached a different attempt to make a thrilling story by adding a game app that can be used to put a vote on students and select the zero-vote student and bully them.
The story is based on the webcomic “Pyramid Game” by Dalggonyak. The series is created by Lee Jae-gyun; he did a very good job showing the dark side of Korean schools. The creator showed the series in a violent and depressing way. The viewers get chills seeing some bullying scenes. Most viewers will think if it’s reality of what happens in Korea, it gives us a more depressing side of the school system there.
The writer also didn’t leave the politics in the school, and the rich-poor discrimination also shown in the drama. The story started slowly and got to get faster in the coming episodes. At the start, it was very dull we didn’t see anything much in the episode, but later after two episodes, the drama started its thrilling side.
The music and sound department did a very good job showing the scenes very depressing and intense. At some scenes when the negative character shows, the background sounds give double impact than the shot. Also, the camera department gave their best work; most of the shots were close shots used in the drama. There is not much VFX used; the series is a plain story.
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The story gets more thrilling on each episode. There are only ten episodes of this drama. Makers didn’t try to make the drama more stretched with the usual sixteen episodes and went for just ten episodes, which is good thinking as more episodes can make the viewers lose interest. Each episode is nearly one hour long, but it is ok to watch. Since the drama is about bullying, there are a lot of violent scenes shown. Even child abuse scenes were shown without revealing anything but as a small approach. The casts are young artists and new artists so their acting was not that good. Most of them showed average performances.
Overall, the drama is a survival thriller with a game element in it happening in a school. For the viewers who like this kind of depressing survival thriller drama, this will be a good one to watch. It is depressing with violence and bullying but at the same time thrilling with the game part. For me, it was a good watch at the end.
I rate 2.5 out of 5 for this survival drama.
Recaps: ‘Pyramid Game’ Episode 3 : Recap and Explained
