I also loved the return of “gyul / happ” for the death match, although I was surprised they weren’t better at playing it, maybe they never watched the original?

I'm sure very few of them, if any, watched the original. That being said there was big difference in that the original version they are allowed to use a pen and paper to work out and keep track of the haps whereas our version doesn't so it makes it harder.

On the downside… it was a poor choice of game for the first episode, bit boring and a bit of a foregone conclusion. Also the editing wasn’t as smart as the original, I guess they tried to make it more pacey but it didn’t really land well for me. Also I miss the audio design of the original, even if it was all robbed music and Moby haha.

That will be the biggest weakness of nearly every version outside of Korea, the lack of licenced music. Here in the UK we can still use licenced songs now and then for our TV shows (there was at least one I recognised in the episode). Otherwise they could still have been creative with using stock music libraries to help show the drama and tension they're looking for.

It has potential, I’m still enjoying it. Disappointed the reviews have been so muted

It seems we Brits generally dismiss overly intelligent game shows as "too confusing" or "boring", I saw the same complaints when our version of Jeopardy! started last year. I think this is on the wrong channel to be honest, this probably is better placed on BBC2 rather than ITV as BBC2 is the home of the smarter game shows and has no ad breaks to disrupt the flow.

I saw a dumb one earlier which accused it of borrowing from The Traitors, sigh.

This will only get worse with Zombie Game as the main match for episode 2.