You might be wondering what all the excitement is about with Among Us if you haven’t been keeping up with the ever-changing movements of online gaming. It’s become one of the most popular online games in the world almost overnight… which is all the more astonishing since it just came out over two years ago. In a nutshell, Among Us is a video game adaptation of The Thing, in which up to nine players work together to find a single imposter who is murdering the others. You’ll recognize a lot of the sensations here if you’ve ever played the party games Mafia or Werewolf.
Due to a variety of circumstances, Among Us has witnessed a rapid growth in popularity. It’s a one-of-a-kind game with an intriguing asymmetrical multiplayer mode, it’s simple to pick up owing to a straightforward idea, and it’s (nearly) free to play on a range of popular platforms, including PC and mobile. Most importantly, it’s a game that delves into unfamiliar territory: communication and collaboration vs sabotage and deception.
In Among Us, ten members of a spaceship’s crew seek to repair and stabilize the ship’s many problems. They’re simply one of the guys in the Enterprise’s engineering department that follows Scotty around. A succession of simple mini-games is used to resolve the issues—rewiring a panel, sliding an access key card, and so on. If you fix enough of the problems, the ship will be stable. You have the upper hand.
Here’s when things become very interesting. Naturally, the fake player wishes to stay and murder the rest of the crew until there is the only one left, at which point they will win. The rest of the team, on the other hand, has no idea who is the imposter.
For an impostor player to succeed, some creative lying and deception are required. Imposters frequently claim to have witnessed the “genuine” impostor or suspicious conduct, such as gamers crawling through the vents (which only the imposter can do). The game continues if the impostor can successfully shift responsibility to someone else, causing them to be evicted, or creating enough uncertainty that no one receives enough votes to be removed.
When compared to other popular games like Fortnite, Among Us is relatively simple. The images are all hand-drawn 2D cartoons, and you can manage your crewmate or impostor character with just a few taps (or the mouse on PC). Even the “repair” mini-games are simple to pick up in a matter of seconds.
A few variables are used in the game. Though most people play on the Skeld, the default spaceship level, there are two more levels inspired by The Thing: a headquarters facility and a polar station. The game may also be set up with many fake players. The most common option, with semi-random participants, is online multiplayer, but you may also set up a private game, either online or over a local network.
Among Us, a Unity engine game created by a small team of just three developers was initially released in June of 2018. It’s a free mobile game for iOS and Android, as well as a $5 PC game. It gained some attention and became popular enough for the developers to start working on a sequel.
But it wasn’t until a few years later that the game began to gain traction. Twitch streamers are the most important aspect. Players of Among Us, who were attracted by the social dynamics of the accusation and expulsion phase, flocked to the famous live streaming site in droves. As additional streamers joined, the number of views grew.
It also helps that the game is available for free on your phone, allowing gamers to jump in and check it out without committing. (Advertising may be removed for $2, and charming cosmetic “pets” can be purchased for a few dollars extra.) It’s also quite quick: A whole game takes no more than 10 minutes to finish, and if you die, you may go into another one nearly immediately.
