Looking for a well-written, gritty classroom thriller for your Halloween season? King’s Game probably doesn’t have what you need; you should probably look elsewhere. The basis if the story is that there’s a game played by a mysterious persona sending “orders” to an entire class of students through text. If the orders aren’t obeyed, the disobedient ones die. The problem is, the main character has already gone through this game once before… (where were the freaking police???)

The whole basis of the story relies on several factors. The assumptions that a) The “King” has inexplicable magical powers, b) that the entire class is full of idiots, and c) that the police, adults, etc don’t exist, or do anything if they do exist. Lots of assumptions to be making here. The main character has wild personality shifts, going from moody to angry to totally normal to a raving nutjob at the drop of a pin. The pacing of the episode was off as well, rushing us into this scenario with really no build-up whatsoever.

Visually, the show is pretty nice to look at, though the character designs bother me somehow. The soundtrack is pretty nice, and the ending theme is freaking amazing, hardcore rock. The show has a bit of promise, I guess, but I really didn’t enjoy the first episode that much, and I’m nervous about being hopeful.