Among Us
Among Us is a 2018 online multiplayer social deduction game developed and published by American game studio Innersloth. The game allows for cross-platform play; it was released on iOS and Android devices in June 2018 and on Windows later that year in November. It was ported to the Nintendo Switch in December 2020 and on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S in December 2021. A virtual reality adaptation, Among Us VR, was released on November 10, 2022.
Among Us takes place in space-themed settings where players are colorful, armless cartoon astronauts. Each player takes on one of two roles: most are Crewmates, but a small number are Impostors. Crewmates work to complete assigned tasks in the game while identifying and voting out suspected Impostors using social deduction, while Impostors have the objective of killing the Crewmates. The game was inspired by the party game Mafia and the science fiction horror film The Thing.
While the game was initially released in 2018 to little mainstream attention, it received a massive rise in popularity in 2020 due to many Twitch streamers and YouTubers playing it during the COVID-19 pandemic. It received favorable reviews from critics for fun and entertaining gameplay. The game and its stylized characters have been the subject of various internet memes.
Gameplay
Among Us is a multiplayer game for four to fifteen players. Up to three players, based on the number of players and the game host's choice, are randomly and secretly chosen to be the Impostors each round. As of 2023, five playable maps are available: a spaceship called "The Skeld", an office building called "MIRA HQ", a planet base called "Polus", "The Airship", a setting from Innersloth's Henry Stickmin series, and the Fungle, a mushroom jungle map. The Crewmates can win the game one of two ways: either by completing all assigned tasks or by ejecting all Impostors. Impostors can likewise win in two ways: either by killing or ejecting enough Crewmates, so that the number of Crewmates matches the number of Imposters, or by sabotaging a critical system on the map. At the start of the game, Crewmates are assigned "tasks" to complete around the map in the form of minigames, minipuzzles, and simple toggles, mostly consisting of maintenance work on vital systems such as fixing wires and downloading data. Impostors cannot complete tasks but may pretend to perform them to feign appearance as legitimate Crewmates. Impostors, however, can perform sabotages, ranging from minor to critical, requiring immediate counteraction by Crewmates to prevent their deaths. Impostors may enter and traverse ventilation ducts, and kill nearby Crewmates. To help Crewmates identify Impostors, there are various surveillance systems on each map, such as security cameras on The Skeld, a door log system with sensors in MIRA HQ, and a vitals indicator in Polus that shows the living status of all players. In addition, certain "visual tasks" provide animated cues, such as scanning oneself in the Skeld's medbay. As Impostors cannot perform tasks, Crewmates can use visual tasks to confirm their identity to nearby Crewmates.Any living player may call a group meeting by reporting a dead body, or by pressing an Emergency Meeting button. During meetings, players discuss—via the in-game text chat or an external voice chat application such as Discord—who they believe to be Impostors based on available witness testimonies, with Impostors lying to hide their identity or falsely accusing other players. Impostors can be identified beyond reasonable doubt if they are seen killing a Crewmate unless there are Shapeshifters, or seen venting unless there are Engineers or Shapeshifters, but ultimately players must weigh the veracity or value of each other's statements. Players then vote for who they believe is an Impostor; if a plurality vote is obtained, the player who received the most votes is "ejected" from the game. Players who are killed or ejected become ghosts, which can still perform tasks or sabotages but are otherwise unable to be seen by or interact with living players. Effectively, spectators and ghosts may see and pass through walls, follow players or other ghosts, and chat with other ghosts.
A November 2021 update added additional specialized roles to the game: Crewmates can also be Engineers, Scientists, as well as regular Crewmates. The first Crewmate that dies can also become a Guardian Angel, the role of which is not given at the beginning of a round. Engineers can traverse vents like Impostors, albeit to a limited capacity. On the other hand, Impostors can stay in the vent as long as they want. Scientists can check vitals from anywhere on the map to see if any player has been killed this round. The ghost of the first Crewmate that dies can become the Guardian Angel, which can temporarily protect living players from being killed. Impostors likewise can be Shapeshifters, allowing them to temporarily morph into other players and assume their color and appearance. However, they might leave evidence behind depending on the game settings. An additional update in June 2024 added three more roles, including Noisemakers and Trackers to the roles of Crewmates, and Phantoms to those of Impostors. Noisemakers trigger an alert when they are killed that can visually indicate their death's location to other Crewmates. Trackers can track the location of another player for a limited amount of time. Phantoms are able to briefly turn invisible to avoid detection. In September 2025, two more roles were added: the Detective for Crewmates and the Viper for Impostors. Detectives are able to open case files for every murder and use their interrogation ability to find out where players were when a player was killed. Vipers are able to dissolve bodies over time, leaving no evidence.
An alternative "Hide and Seek" game mode was added in December 2022. There are no meetings or ejections, and a single Impostor, known as the seeker, attempts to kill all Crewmates within a fixed countdown timer. Crewmates must hide or flee from the Impostor and can complete tasks to roll down the timer, as well as enter vents for a brief time to hide from the Impostor. Impostors cannot perform sabotages or enter vents in this mode. Crewmates are also given a display showing their proximity to the Impostor as well as the number of remaining Crewmates. Near the end of the round, the Impostor obtains a "seek" button allowing them to see where Crewmates are.
Before each game, various options can be adjusted to customize aspects of gameplay, such as player movement speed, the allowed number of emergency meetings, number of tasks and visual tasks, or whether or not an Impostor is revealed after being voted off, allowing participants to manually balance the game's settings to their desires.
Players may modify their own appearances with cosmetics, including skins, hats, visors, and pets, some of which are purchasable as microtransactions.
Development and release
Early development
Among Us was inspired by the live party game Mafia, and the science fiction horror film The Thing. The idea for the concept was originally given by Marcus Bromander, co-founder of Innersloth, who had played Mafia since he was a kid. In the original game, function cards were dealt and players wandered around a house, aimlessly, while another person secretly killed the players, drawing a finger around their neck. Most of its mechanics were still present in Among Us, but the team wanted to "alleviate the need to create an interesting home model and have someone wandering around in a boring environment". So, they decided that the game would be space-themed and also added tasks, which, according to Forest Willard, programmer at Innersloth, "changed several times during development".Development began in November 2017. The game was initially intended to be a mobile-only local multiplayer game with a single map. Bromander paused development on Innersloth's other game, The Henry Stickmin Collection, in order to build Among Us first map, The Skeld. When they began developing the first map, they intended that the ship was always in crisis and that the Impostors could do tasks. However, they found this setup "stressful" and decided that it " much time for detective work and informed meeting conversations". Willard described playtesting as painful and frustrating, as the game would break down during sessions forcing him to send playtesters new builds off of Google Play. The team tested the game with 8 of their friends and never tested the game with 9 or the maximum of 10 players. The game was developed using the Unity engine.
The game was released in June 2018 to Android and iOS under the AppID "spacemafia". Shortly after release, Among Us had an average player count of 30 to 50 concurrent players. Bromander blamed the game's poor release on Innersloth being "really bad at marketing". The team nearly abandoned the project multiple times but continued work on it due to a "small but vocal player base", adding in online multiplayer, new tasks, and customization options. The game was released on Steam on November 16, 2018. Cross-platform play was supported upon release of the Steam version. Originally, the game had no audio to avoid revealing hidden information in a local setting, and Willard mixed sounds from numerous sound packs to compose the SFX during the game's Steam release.
On August 8, 2019, Innersloth released a second map, MIRA HQ, a "tightly packed headquarters roughly the size of The Skeld". A third map, Polus, was added on November 12, 2019, and is set in a research station. The fourth map, the Airship, was released on March 31, 2021, and is based on a location in the Henry Stickmin universe. MIRA HQ and Polus originally cost players via in-app purchase. Their prices were reduced to on January 6, 2020, then made free on June 11, 2020. While the map packs are still available for purchase on all platforms, they now only provide the player the skins that were bundled with the maps. According to programmer Forest Willard, the team "stuck with a lot longer than we probably should have from a pure business standpoint", putting out regular updates to the game as often as once per week. This led to a steady increase in players, causing the game's player base to snowball. Bromander attributed this to the studio having enough savings to keep working on the game even while it was not selling particularly well.