They’re “Among Us”

Brendan Wolski, Editor

You are doing your regular daily tasks aboard your spaceship, everything is fine until a meeting is called and someone has been murdered, no one can be trusted and your suspicious of everyone on board. 

This describes the experience and situation that the indie game “Among us” presents to its players.

It is an online multiplayer game for 4-10 people and it is a game all about deception, teamwork and trust. The goal of the game for the crewmates is to complete all their “tasks” aboard the ship before the imposters eliminate them. 

These tasks are little mini-games like swiping a card or connecting wires. The goal of the imposters is to try and get all the crewmates eliminated before they can complete their missions and cause as much chaos on the ship as possible. 

Each crewmate can call an emergency meeting or identify if a player has been eliminated to call a meeting of all the players where they can discuss and vote who is guilty or innocent. This is the most important and interesting part of the game because it gives each player the opportunity to defend themselves or accuse someone of being the imposter. 

The imposters, if they’re skilled, can turn the tables on an innocent crewmate who was probably never involved in the situation.

I think that “Among us” is a twist on an already successful concept, games like “Town of Salem” are based on the same idea that few players know the truth (the imposters) and the majority of people don’t know who to trust (the crewmates). 

This leads to the innocent majority of players having to try and guess who the guilty players are but if their guesses are wrong then the innocent team pays the price. Some of the best times I’ve had was arguing with my friends about why I’m innocent and someone else is guilty.

Sometimes when players are clueless as to who the imposter might be the game may devolve into a sort of witch hunt where people are  just frantically trying to blame people over the littlests suspicions. 

It’s a fantastic social expairment of a game that shows how the group must act in a stressful situation. I highly recommend playing it and it’s free to play on mobile devices so all of your friends can play together as well.