When first shown the colorful, bean-shaped characters of “Among Us,” one’s first thoughts might be of the other incredibly popular game that took 2020 by storm, “Fall Guys.” Instead of a party game that’s all about flashy, social obstacle courses, “Among Us” is a quiet murder mystery set on a lonely spaceship.
While the game has exploded in popularity as of Aug. 2020, “Among Us” was actually released by developers Innersloth in Nov. 2018 on Windows and Mobile. The mobile version is free with the option to pay and remove ads, whereas the windows version is $5. On top of that, the game also offers a handful of purchasable costumes, as well as small “pets” that follow the player around as they play the game.
The game itself follows a formula reminiscent of games like “Mafia,” “Town of Salem,” “Secret Hitler,” or other social deduction games. With anywhere between 4-10 players, the premise is simple: all the players are on a spaceship as crew and have to maintain the ship. However, one of those crew members is not who they seem. That crew member is the “Imposter”, whose goal is to lie, sabotage, and kill the other crewmates. The crewmates, on the other hand, have to perform simple tasks to maintain their spaceship while also trying to deduce who the imposter is, and then convince their fellow crew members of who the imposter is and that they should be voted out.
While “Among Us” had seen small pockets of growth in it’s two years of release, it didn’t grow explosively until this July. Through a combination of several popular streamers stumbling across it and playing it in front of large audiences, as well as the very accessible nature of the game lead to a sudden, delayed burst of popularity. While the multi-platform numbers haven’t been released, the player count on Windows alone has reached a peak of 438 thousand concurrent players and settling at a consistent average of 200 thousand since.
The game itself is very quick to learn, and players can get by with the touchscreen or only the mouse on their computer if they like, with all the tasks being simple mini-games like sorting and color matching. The real bulk of the game lies in the interactions with the other players, specifically the meetings. Meetings occur when someone finds the body of a crew member that was killed by the imposter, or if someone presses the “Emergency Meeting” button. The meeting is the one part of the game where players are able to communicate with each other, and because of it the meetings often become a mob of the imposters trying to sow discord and cast suspicion on an innocent crewmate, said crewmate trying to defend themselves, and the rest of the members of the meeting just trying to figure out who to trust.
This game has already had a rapid rise in popularity, and looks to be a new permanent fixture in the industry, as the developers plan to continue adding new content for players to sink their teeth into. While it doesn’t have much potential to become an eSport due to the largely quiet and secluded nature of playing, it’s ease of play and social aspects make it the perfect game to pick up and play with friends, especially those who can’t meet up in person during the pandemic due to social distancing.