I recently came across a South Korean reality TV show called The Genius broadcasted by a cable channel called tvN. It started airing in 2013 with 4 seasons, having 12 episodes and 13 contestants each season. Each episode will have the contestants to compete together in the main match, and will end the episode by eliminating one among the two players who are selected to play a death match, and the last man standing will be the champion of the season. Each contestant is meant to gather garnets to survive each episode, and towards the final episode, the garnets will be granted as prize money. The Genius started off with The Genius: Rules of the Game, The Genius: Rule Breaker, The Genius: Black Garnet and ended with The Genius: Grand Final, which gathers 13 contestants among the first three seasons.

The matches being played require the players to be observant, tactical, have leadership skills and more. The show is very interesting as each player has different kind of charzcter and personality in terms of game playing or gather other contestants to form a group to win the game and survive. It has no rules and regulations when it comes to betrayal, cheating, stealing or bargaining between players (e.g. transfer of garnets between players to win the match), and hence it will result in unexpected plot twist and that results in the viewers to have agency when watching the show.

For example, in season 3 The Genius: Black Garnet episode 10, two players faced off each other at the death match playing the Monorail Game. Each player is meant to create a monorail that cannot be completed to eliminate the other contestant. The puzzle had a fixed start and the players will lose the game if one cannot complete the puzzle. Winner will be determined when one calls out ‘Impossible’. The players can only place one or two puzzles at the same time to create the monorail (two puzzles cannot be seperated when being placed). While watching the game, the male player was seen to have lost the game but he placed another two puzzles to continue the rail. Later his intention was reveled to disrupt the opponent’s mind and lead the opponent to continue on the monorail that cannot be completed, and that gave him a chance to call out ‘Impossible’. This death match requires mind-reading skill, reverse psychological thinking, oberserving skill and tactical planning skill. After watching the entire series, it really gave me a lot of ideas in terms pf creating puzzles for my upcoming group project which my group have decided to develop it into a game. I personally love this show a lot because it is really well developed, either the player’s character or the plot twist or the games. Truly reccommend this show. For those who enjoy watching Liar Game, it is a must to watch this!

The images below show the posters of The Genius season 3 and 4.

P.S. The winner in the death match is the champion of season 3 and the final season.