I’m just putting the finishing touches on the Poll results, providing no last minute issues they should go up on Tuesday around 9:30pm.
Right now however here’s something that’s been bought up in the Discord, Four Wish, a new Korean Youtube brain survival show that’s been running for a while but they’ve just started adding English captions, one episode for now and adding on a weekly basis. It’s been created by a collective called MINDZERO, who apparently did some work on The Devil’s Plan: Death Room on Netflix. The set-up is broadly as you’d expect, 10 people play puzzly games at a mansion, they earn currency by being good at the games, they have to avoid elimination, someone wins. This one has some fun mystery twists and secrets – found items that can be used on future games, but what are they and what can they do?
The first game is relatively simple, a card game, but winning isn’t solely about having the most points at the end, there are eight quests (video game style acheivements) that need to be won – some based on how well you can win the game as presented, but many of them earned by understanding implications of the rules and the apparatus to make seemingly impossible things happen. The graphical package seems very familiar if you’re into this sort of thing. Plenty of satisfying a-ha moments, and plenty of overarching mystery threads to look forward to resolving in future episodes. If you like this sort of thing – and we do – worth a look!
Absolute banger, thank you for sharing, looking forward to future English translations of the rest of the episodes already. From a distance.
Yes, this has got the sauce. Verrry much feels like the snips from the cutting room floor of The Devil’s Plan, but specifically those mid-season games they tend to do with a big discovery element.
Ep 2 subbed!
The central mechanic is more difficult to grasp as it involves an understanding of Korean words and characters, but it’s *basically* hide and seek, and you don’t need knowledge to understand the intrigue.
Ep 3 subbed!
And very, very good-mad indeed, bordering on (but just to say not reaching) too mad to follow. A strong leader for my vote for the 2026 Streaming Five already, assuming it’s eligible. If you like This Sort Of Thing then it gets about as strong a recommendation as you can get.
Ep 4 subbed!
Incredible episode. The ending of ep 4 is a masterpiece of editing.
I didn’t entirely understand it, but I still loved it.
(Did get the gag at the end, though…)
Kwon Hye-soo, Doc-tor Who, got to have a system.
Yeah, this was a *complicated* game because of the way the time jumping and paradoxes worked, although watching everyone try and out paradox each other was *thrilling* – it took me a while to work out how the simplest version of the game was played (total gold not invested x round number = total amount of money to be divvied out by investment – I’m not sure this is actually that complex, although different currencies made it a bit more difficult).
Loved the first elimination game as well, great knife twist before the credits, a couple of fun reveals, could strategise at home. An hour-and-a-half well spent!
Still waiting for episode five, hopefully not too much longer! Anyway you’re not going mad, they’re calling it “Four Wish” so I’ve changed the post title to match.
Edit: Hilariously within about ten minutes of this comment the English subs have gone live.
After a few weeks where they’ve been concentrating on a Q and A video, Eng subs for Ep 6 are now up.
A lot to keep track of with this one, but a lot of fun and some great payoffs.
What a cool and exciting auction game. I like how the ‘items’ auctioned had huge consequences for the game, as opposed to just auctioning ‘number tiles’ as in The Genius. I also love how the games from this show often have multiple layers, a ‘game’ within a ‘game’. I am really impressed at how this show is meticulously planned. Really underrated show, wish more people would know about this, as it is very accessible (youtube).
Yeah really enjoyed this and intrigued to see how the second half pans out.
Although. What I would say about accessibility is that I think the games have a larger amount of Korean writing content and it’s a bit harder to keep track of everything compared to The Genius/Devil’s Plan where the games are a bit more abstract and/or game theory-ish, and when we do see something written it tends to be simple and direct statements. The *gists* of Four Wish are fine, great even, but I definitely think not knowing the language is a barrier to nuance in several of the games – there’s a lot of writing to take in, and the word games have been basically impossible. That’s a very “first world problem” criticism of a format not aimed at us!