What is Among Us? The viral game taking over Twitch and YouTube
InnerslothThe indie party game Among Us isn’t quite a new release but, it’s treacherous and back-stabbing elements have made it one of the hottest games on Twitch and YouTube, as streamers and content creators are turning on each other left and right.
Among Us originally released in June 2018, and Innersloth devs have previously revealed that back in the early days, there would be times too few players would be online to even find a game at all.
Compare that to the overwhelming success it has seen since its resurgence, with recent numbers of over 3 million concurrent players, and it’s no wonder Innersloth announced that they have canceled the development of an Among Us sequel, which was expected to be released in 2021, to focus on adding key features and improving servers for the original title.
If you haven’t watched or played Among Us before, don’t worry too much, as it’s pretty easy to figure out what makes the game tick. It shouldn’t be long before you’re conniving with teammates to get ahead, whether you’re the Imposter or not, so let’s take a look at how it works.
How do you play Among Us?
A match of Among Us can be played with a group of 4-10 players. All players take the role of a crew member trying to survive on one of the game’s 3 maps.
One or more of your teammates will take the role of the “Imposter” who has been infected by a parasitic, shape-shifting alien that is hell-bent on deceiving and murdering everyone else on board.
Here comes the tricky part: the identity of the Imposter is only known to that player. This infected crew member can sneak around the ship to get other players and frame non-Imposters in the process. The chosen player can also sabotage parts of the map to split others up and keep everyone else on their toes.
InnerslothHow do you win in Among Us?
As the Impostor, you will need to remain undetected and eliminate as many players as possible before they can complete each of their tasks. Once you have eliminated most of the players, depending on game size, or successfully prevented players from fixing a sabotaged ship, you will pick up a win for your efforts.
The regular, non-infected crew’s job is to repair and do tasks around the map to keep things running, try and stay alive, and quickly figure out who the Imposter is so you can get rid of them.
This is accomplished by a Survivor-style voting screen where players can chat and vote on who to send out of the airlock. These discussions are where the imposter can really manipulate people, and discussions can get extremely heated at times.
Since the identity of the Imposter is only known to them, there’s no way they’re going to give themselves away and admit it. As Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel does a great job of displaying above, being falsely banished can be one of the most frustrating things to happen in a game today.
Based on its current trajectory and how fast things are taking off on Twitch and YouTube, Among Us is showing no signs of slowing down, and it has even seen massive viewership increases for top streamers, with the likes of Valkyrae and xQc setting new records, partly thanks to the hype of the entertaining party game.