Among Us

***Among Us*** (also known in the Apple App Store as *Among Us!*) is an online multiplayer science-fiction/social deduction murder mystery game created by Innersloth that runs on the Unity Game Engine. It was released on June 15, 2018, on iOS, Android, and was later released on Steam on August 18, 2018. On December 15, 2020, a Nintendo Switch edition was released, which is available on the console's Nintendo eShop. The game is soon coming to Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S sometime during 2021. The game is set on one of four locations; a spaceship, above-earth base, planet base, or a Henry-Stickmin-themed Airship which contains a group of crew members, among which are up to three Impostors who have to Sabotage the ship/base/planet and kill off the Crew. Crewmates have to complete their chosen tasks, report bodies of other Crewmates who are killed, and initiate emergency meetings if they witness An Impostor doing something incriminating.

By 2020, *Among Us* was considered by Innersloth to be a complete game, and as of June 11, 2020, MIRA HQ and Polus, which were previously paid for, were released for free for players playing both on PC and iOS/Android to host. The game gained an increase in popularity in 2020 due to famous Twitch streamers and YouTubers playing it. A sequel, titled *Among Us 2*, was announced by Innersloth on August 18, 2020, and was scheduled to be available by 2021 but was canceled in September. Work will instead improve the original game due to the unexpected popularity of the original *Among Us*. Also, many forms of merchandise, such as T-shirts and toys, have been announced and launched.

## Overview

*Among Us* can either take place on a spaceship in outer space, a building high in the Earth's atmosphere, an alien planet, or an airship. There are two types of roles: The Impostors and the Crewmates. There can be a total of ten players in an online game, with up to three Impostors. The Impostors' objective is to eliminate players and Sabotage using either aggressive, defensive, or passive tactics before the Crewmates complete all of their tasks or discover everyone's true identity. The Crewmates' objective is to complete all of their tasks while figuring out who The Impostors are. All tasks are mainly visual and provide a fine user-friendly interface for players of all levels and ages.

## Gameplay

*Among Us* is a murder mystery game that can take place either in a spaceship named "The Skeld," the headquarters of the company MIRA, a research base on the planet Polus, or a airship. Among the players, one to three will be randomly chosen as Impostors, who need to blend in and kill the Crewmates. The Crewmates' goal is to complete tasks in the form of mini-games, such as fixing wiring, emptying garbage, or swiping an ID card, all the while having the goal of finding out who The Impostors are and voting them out. Impostors can Sabotage the map, which results in either a problem that will cause the Crew an inconvenience until fixed (e.g., turning off the lights, which affect the vision of the Crew, and messing up the Communications, which disables several useful features for the Crew and at the same time); or even a severe problem which gives the Crew an important task that must be completed under a time limit (such as depletion of the oxygen aboard the ship or meltdown of the reactor inside). The Impostors' goal is to kill off enough Crewmates for an equal amount of Impostors and Crewmates left, which results in a win for The Impostors as they theoretically could not be voted out. They are able to do this using the aforementioned sabotaging mechanic, though their main strategy is to directly murder each and every member one by one.

Players can interact with various useful resources, such as a camera system, a sensor, an administration panel, and a vitality machine, which can help crew members catch An Impostor killing a player or entering a vent. When a player finds a dead body, they can report it, which pauses the game and leads to a discussion where people can interact to find out whom The Impostor is by addressing evidence found with deaths, where they can vote for a person they think is The Impostor. The player with the most votes will be ejected from the map and show whether they are An Impostor (if the Confirm Ejects option is activated). Also, if they are unsure, players can skip the vote, and if the most votes are cast to skip, no one will be ejected. This also occurs when the votes on two or more options are equal; that is, it is considered a tie.

When a player dies, they will become a ghost, who can explore the map without colliding with the walls. However, they are not visible to the living Crew and can only be seen by other ghosts. Their communication system is limited, as they can only interact with other dead or ejected players, and they cannot resolve Sabotage. If they are a Crewmate, they can still complete tasks. In the same way, Impostor ghosts can still Sabotage to disrupt the Crewmates who are still alive. Before a game starts, players can configure certain game options, such as the number of Impostors, speed, map, kill cooldown, among others. They can also customize their character with cosmetics, such as colors, skins, hats and pets.

## Trivia

* *Among Us* was inspired by the real-life group social deduction game, *Mafia,* and by the science-fiction horror film *The Thing*.
	+ The idea for the concept was given by Marcus Bromander, who played *Mafia* since he was a kid.
* When developing The Skeld, the ship was intended to be always in crisis and Impostors could do tasks to mix themselves with the Crewmates, however, it was discarded as they found it "stressful" and that would affect discussions.
* Innersloth has planned to launch *Among Us* for consoles, specifically PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but found a problem implementing player communication, as text or voice chat seemed to be useless.
	+ Despite this issue, Innersloth was able to launch *Among Us* on Nintendo Switch on December 15, 2020, which is likely because, similarly to a phone, the Switch and Switch Lite both have touch controls in handheld mode, which can be used for typing in the chat.
* MIRA HQ and Polus originally served as additional paid content for *Among Us* until its update on June 11, 2020, when the two maps were made permanently free for everyone.
	+ During this period, these two maps had free weeks for all players to host temporarily.
	+ Currently, the exclusive skins from these maps are paid additional content for the game, likely so that those who bought the bundle would not feel completely ripped off.
* *Among Us* may have been internally named "Space Mafia" during development, as the Play Store's app package name is "`com.Innersloth.spacemafia`."
* During its history, the game faced, and is facing, several bugs:
	+ Several persons are automatically disconnected due to error.
	+ Some people who become Impostors have the skills of a Crewmate and not those of An Impostor.
* According to Innersloth, *Among Us* took six months to enter open beta and more than six months to exit from open beta.
* According to Innersloth via Twitter, they settled for the Crewmate design relatively quickly.
* The characters' design is similar to the Morolians from *Space Channel 5*.
* The *Henry Stickmin* series, which is also developed by Innersloth, is referenced many times in *Among Us* for significant motives.
* Even though the game was made back in 2018, it only recently became popular with major new updates in 2020.