Written by Matthew Escalante, Staff Writer/Photographer/Editing
Is the game “Among Us” worth it? Does it really deserve all the attention it has been getting recently? What is the game even about?
“Among Us” is an online multiplayer deception game released by InnerSloth game studio on June 15, 2018.
The game takes place on one of three maps — Skeld, Mira HQ and Polus.
Players are divided into two teams: imposters and crewmates. The goal of the crewmates is to complete various tasks around the map, while the imposters’ goal is to sabotage the crewmates progress through deception, sabotage, and killing the crewmates.
Crewmates may remove imposters by reporting dead bodies or calling meetings and then voting, with the person with the most votes being ejected or killed.
Despite the game being released two years ago, it had very little attention up until 2020, when various streamers and YouTubers discovered the aging game. Before the spike of players, the game development team struggled to properly advertise their beloved game. During its first year, less than 100 players were online at any time, though this community was fairly vocal, resulting in regular updates and improvements to the game (Sometimes up to weekly updates!). These updates allowed the game to gain more and more popularity, despite its lackluster release. The developers even admitted to sticking with the game longer than they should have.
Now they have nearly 100 million downloads and 1.5 million active players on average. Due to this popularity, the team decided to cancel “Among Us 2” to instead improve the original game, adding new features that would have been present in the sequel and fixing various problems with the game.
Some may have their doubts about such a simple game, may it be because of the simplistic art style or maybe the overall familiarity with this type of game. Though there must be a reason it has gained so much popularity.
To put it simply, the question isn’t, “Is it worth a buy?” But “is it worth it to try?” and in my opinion, yes it is.
The game is free on mobile and still connects with people playing on pc, so you aren’t really sacrificing much, just a little bit of your time for one or two games. Players may also buy cosmetics to help support the developers.
The game is fairly balanced, allowing imposters to split up tight groups of people and kill cooldowns making sure the imposters aren’t too trigger happy. Though the game finds its origins in Mafia and Werewolf, it sets itself apart from them by including tasks, vents, a more active playstyle and more.
These differences can mean the world, since the crewmates can actually do something besides wait in groups waiting to be killed or just killing people left and right as imposters without any real down side. The experience can be completely altered based on what kind of people you are playing with.
Are you playing with some of your friends? Strangers? Or people who have an IQ equivalent to a sack of rocks? Either way, it should be entertaining, for better or worse!