How the winds of popularity shift. Yesterday's explosion is tomorrow's whimper and that which is forgotten can become new again. This encapsulates the sort of whiplash I felt from being shoved up against the wall of Among Us content that has descended upon the Internet in the last month or so. So enraptured was I, that I never even stopped to think about the fact that I never actually took the time to address the game on my blog, I was all about Fall Guys not that long ago. But in the blink of an eye a new game has taken the top spot for the next couple of weeks at least, so it's time to don our space suits and ascend into a tense interstellar game of social deduction and paranoia. (Which, as many people have noted, sort of looks like exactly what Fall Guys did given the coincidental similarities in character design.)
But what exactly is Among Us and why should you care? Well have you ever played Werewolf? What about Town of Salem? Cause it's essentially those two games with a little bit more 'gameplay' thrown in there for good measure. Essentially Among Us is a game wherein a group of people, ideally 10, take it upon themselves to conduct a slew of miscellaneous tasks around the map that are represented by simple minigames. Should everyone complete their tasks, the crewmates win and everything is hunky dory. But there's a catch. (Obviously, otherwise this would be a really boring game.) At least one of the crewmates in the group (ideally two) isn't actually there to perform tasks but is actually on the prowl for fleshbags to mutilate in preferably discrete ways. There 'imposters' prowl around the corridors, pretending to do task and making use of the vent systems to quickly port across the map. When the time is right they close in for the kill and try their best not to be seen by any others, it's a real game of cat and mouse.
However the real competition kicks off in the discussion phrase, which is when either a body is found and reported or a crewmate uses one of their allotted 'Emergency Discussion' tokens. At this point everyone on the ship is pulled back to the meeting room and a dialogue is held, whether in text chat or over mics. The general idea of this whole part of the game is to deduce who the killer is so that they can then be voted off by the majority, although more often than not it devolved into fun baseless accusations and crossed wires as the Imposters either stay quiet or try to sow the seeds of discontent amidst crewmates. So as you can see this is actually very similar to Werewolf in concept, to the point where I bet 'InnerSloth' were thankful that game has no trademarkable material surrounding it because this game would most certainly be in violation.
So essentially this is a game about killing folk than lying about it so that others take the blame, all in the hope that either the Imposters manage to match the number of crewmates on the ship (at which point it's automatic victory) or the Imposters can set off some sort of sabotage that the others don't manage to fix in time. (Such as venting O2 or overloading the reactor.) All the while the killers are beholden to cooldowns which make it so that they can't go on a massive murder spree and must utilise stealth and tactics to get the better of the humans who outnumber them. So at the end of the day it's a battle of wits, one that is incredibly gratifying for both sides, making it rather significantly unique amidst most asymmetrical multiplayer games out there in the world. (Although there does tend to be a desire for most to play as the Imposter at first, only to then realise how much stress it is being the imposter. Crossing that line and coming to those terms is really the point when most start to appreciate the title fully.)
And yes, this is the game that has absolutely swallowed the world in a frenzy whilst gobbling up the excitement that Fall Guys had drummed up prior. This has been helped largely by Streamers and just how much fun it is to watch a group of friends throw accusations at each other, cluing folk into the fact that it'd be just as much fun to do it themselves. And let me be clear that as of this time, I still have no idea what the spark was which lit this inferno or interest around the game. I mean, folk started playing it because their favourite streamers were, streamers came to it because it was becoming popular; so which came first the chicken or the egg? With Fall Guys it made sense; the title had just come out and people were fawning over the new hotness, Among Us, on the otherhand, has been out for nearly two years! The devs were ready to move onto the next game; why did this game suddenly explode like a firework out of nowhere? (Maybe we'll never know.)
Speaking of the Devs, can we just stop to appreciate how insane all of this popularity must have been for InnerSloth. For any who have stopped to wonder why exactly it is that the servers are so flimsy and overloaded (actually I think that's started to clear up as of late, but it was issue for a while) they might want to cast a little sympathy to the team of 5 who worked on the game. That's 5 folk who, unless I'm hugely mistaken, consists of only 1 coder. In that light, it's amazing that the team managed to fix the issues to some degree at all! (I'm guessing someone worked overtime) Whatsmore, though I'm unsure how relevant it is, these are the same people who worked on the Henry Stickman Collection; which is culmination of some of the most classic high-quality flash games on the Internet. (So that's a thing.) Personally, I smile to think that in this age of multimillion dollar mega games, this summer of gaming was ruled by two indie title which had indie teams behind, they even eclipsed Fortnite, I'd take my hat off to that sort of irony if I ever actually wore one.
As primarily a viewer (of mostly Twitch Among Us streams) I must admit it is exhilarating even from a spectator standpoint to watch the action of a great round. Watching those clever little tactics go into play, like killing when all the player sprites are stacked on each other so that no one can tell who did it; or killing someone, venting, and then tagging along with someone else to find that body, it all just oozes entertainment value. I know that some have bemoaned the way that the influx of popularity has birthed something of a competitive haze upon the game which drained the 'party-game' atmosphere, but as long as everyone's having a good time I think it's great to see the limits of ingenuity get tweaked for the perfect round of deception. (It does become distinctly unfun when people start getting too serious about it though.) I think it might even be fun to go over some of the most clever and interesting plays that I've seen. (You know, if this game is even still popular in two weeks time.)
I've played social deduction games only a handful of times in my life, but they've always been a ton of fun and I'm surprised that more don't make it into videogame form. There's something infinitely fun about the warring extremes of lying and sleuthing butting heads in a duel of wits, it's an intoxicating concoction. I must also commend InnerSloth for not becoming sloths about their surprise success, and cancelling their planned Among Us 2. This may seem like a negative but it was in order to roll the features that were designed for that into the first game without unnecessarily splitting their fan base and risking that fallout. (Always like a smart business move that's pro consumer) I await anxiously to see how it is that Among Us manages to make the most of it's 15 minutes, or if it'll end up floating out of the airlock. (And for what it's worth, I hope this one's around to stay)
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