Among Us Infiltrates the Online Community
After two years of obscurity, Among Us finds widespread popularity
By Riley Fink
After two years of obscurity, Among Us finds widespread popularity
By Riley Fink
Though the social deduction game Among Us came out over two years ago on Android, iOS, and Steam, it went largely unnoticed until midway through this year, where it’s seen an explosion of popularity, largely attributed to Twitch streamers like sodapoppin playing the game live. Its quick popularity was enough to even briefly invade the political space on Oct. 21, when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez played the game on Twitch to over 400,000 viewers. Many games that get this popular this fast have very little substance but high replayability, leading to extremely short lifespans in the constantly changing internet landscape. Thankfully, Among Us is not one of those, and is a true gem in the online multiplayer realm.
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The game has 4-10 players, either friends or random people online, walk around a map and complete simple tasks while 1-2 of the players are secretly imposters, whose goal is to kill as many crewmates as they can without being noticed and voted off. Once a body is reported or the emergency button in the middle of the map is pressed by a player, a meeting starts where the players need to discuss if and who they will vote off. Fans of games like Mafia and Werewolf will find the concept quite derivative, though it seems to me like an evolution of sorts for the genre.
Mafia and similar games too often come down to a game of numbers, where the strategy for beating mafia members remains the same throughout, and the only choices mafia members have outside of discussions is which people to kill and when. While you’re playing as an imposter in Among Us, execution of those kills is actually a factor, giving you more tools like vents to quickly move around the map and the ability to sabotage certain areas to draw crewmates there. You can actually get caught red handed in a murder and have to lie your way out of it, one of the near infinite amount of other unique situations.
On the crewmate side, you have the choice to do your tasks and split up, or to ignore them and sleuth around for imposters. The only ways to win as a crewmate are to either vote out the imposters or to finish everyone’s tasks, so there’s an interesting risk and reward to it, contrary to Mafia where town members only need to focus on voting out mafia. It’s extremely engaging on both sides every time you play, simple enough to jump into without experience, and yet deep enough for much more complex strategies.
This isn’t to say the game is flawless; there are only three maps at the time of writing, some tasks get repetitive, some of the maps seem unbalanced, and there are a few strategies like agreeing to group together near the end that are very difficult to beat. However, with the game’s developers InnerSloth cancelling their planned followup in order to update and improve Among Us over the coming years, the game seems to have an extremely bright future ahead of it.
Mafia and similar games too often come down to a game of numbers, where the strategy for beating mafia members remains the same throughout, and the only choices mafia members have outside of discussions is which people to kill and when. While you’re playing as an imposter in Among Us, execution of those kills is actually a factor, giving you more tools like vents to quickly move around the map and the ability to sabotage certain areas to draw crewmates there. You can actually get caught red handed in a murder and have to lie your way out of it, one of the near infinite amount of other unique situations.
On the crewmate side, you have the choice to do your tasks and split up, or to ignore them and sleuth around for imposters. The only ways to win as a crewmate are to either vote out the imposters or to finish everyone’s tasks, so there’s an interesting risk and reward to it, contrary to Mafia where town members only need to focus on voting out mafia. It’s extremely engaging on both sides every time you play, simple enough to jump into without experience, and yet deep enough for much more complex strategies.
This isn’t to say the game is flawless; there are only three maps at the time of writing, some tasks get repetitive, some of the maps seem unbalanced, and there are a few strategies like agreeing to group together near the end that are very difficult to beat. However, with the game’s developers InnerSloth cancelling their planned followup in order to update and improve Among Us over the coming years, the game seems to have an extremely bright future ahead of it.