Among Us Review — The Next Big Thing.
Play with 9 of your friends and try to find out who is the killer. Among Us, the sci-fi indie hit, came out in June 2018, but did not start to blow up until about a month ago. It is even bigger and more popular than you think. Some people classify this game as a survival/party game, which makes it a lot of fun to play with your friends.
So, in this game there is imposters which are the people who are the killers, and then there are crewmates who are the people who are trying to find and eliminate the imposters. All characters in the game have humans playing the roles, there are no CPUs. When an imposter kills someone, and someone sees the body they can report it, and this triggers a meeting to vote who the majority believe to be the imposter. Whoever has the greatest number of votes gets kicked out of the game. If it was the imposter that was indeed voted off, the crewmates win the game, if not, you keep playing. The crewmates can win the game two different ways: they find out who the killer is, or they can finish their tasks.
There are many reasons to play this game with your friends and family, it is fun to try to get people killed off who are not the killer and it gives you a sense of a genius manipulator. It is also quite comical when the little cartoon characters are killed, and to keep quiet so you do not ruin the game for others. When killed, you become a ghost and try to finish your tasks to help your fellow crewmates win.
An article on PCGAMER says, “Among Us adds things to do in between accusations, making it a more active experience and building more tension.” So if you get killed first you aren’t just sitting there the rest of the game you help finish the tasks to help your team win.
The game is only 4.99 on PC and it is free on IOS and Android. There are three different maps with different tasks so the game really does not get old and you can play with your friends for hours. You can change the settings of the game if you are the host, if you want 1,2,3, or even 4 imposters you can choose from that. This game is a socially constructed game which involves a lot of talking and manipulating the other players and their stories and alibis.
This game did not start to blow up until a few weeks ago a Youtuber named Disguised Toast and his friends started playing it for fun. It had around 1,000 players on average every day on its servers. Now, According to SensorTower, this game has over 60 million downloads and 200,000 players on its servers daily.
Preston Kells
photo by LifeTouch.
I interviewed fellow Moeller student Preston Kells, who has amassed over 35 hours on the game in the past 2 weeks. He said, “Among Us is so popular because it can hold up to 10 of your friends in a lobby and it is a game of deceit and betrayal which leads to funny moments and great gameplay. The reason this game is different from others is it is simple to understand and is available on console and your phone which makes it very available to everyone so you can always play with your friends.” This game is being played by a lot of kids at Moeller giving them something to do during M-block and mentor group. This is great for making friends in your mentor group and classes, which is ultimately a good thing. So, the next time you are with a lot of your friends in mentor group hop on Among Us and give it whirl.