It’s the Squid Game at heart, but trying to immigrate too many elements from the show damaged it badly. The longer you watch, the less you want to see interviews. The first episode there was shock factor in them as they got eliminated, but after it just becomes tedious.
The game is not fair. At all. To replace the deaths outside the games they’ve added “tests” which are really just free times to remove players. No defending yourself, usually random and ruins a lot of the suspense from the games themselves. Near the end 1/3 of the players were eliminated. I’d rather have actual games played to remove more people, even if the games are optional than just “volunteer and maybe you can choose 3 people to remove”
Of course players don’t know each other. 456 people, nobody will know everyone by game 3! The audience doesn’t even know 90% of players till there’s only 12 left!