Among Us: the game made for coronavirus
an appreciation post
The past months in quarantine have left many people grasping for anything that can bring us together. The latest thing that has been able to do that might be the video game Among Us.
Among Us is simple. It’s a Mafia-style game for up to ten players where there are 1-3 imposters and everyone is trying to either figure out who the imposters are while completing tasks or they’re the imposter and are trying to kill everyone. When things get suspicious, people can call meetings to discuss who everyone thinks the killers are and then vote.
Eventually either the imposters are all killed, they killed everyone or somehow everyone accomplished their tasks before either happens. The rounds are short, the mechanics are easy to pick up and it’s one of those games you can enjoy for endless hours despite it being somewhat repetitive. The game only costs $5 on Steam and the app version on your phone for free.
What has made this game so enjoyable though is that it’s offered a way for friends to come together in an accessible way so that even those who never play video games can easily participate. With everyone now so accustomed to interacting over Zoom, it’s not an extra hurdle to set up an audio or video chat that enhances the experience of the game. You can play the game with random people online but the game really shines when you play with people you know and are able to verbally communicate with them.
Unlike Animal Crossing, which serves to recreate the fun and mundane, but often solitary, parts of life that the coronavirus no longer permits us to do, Among Us facilitates social interaction. To play Animal Crossing you also need a Switch and then you need to shell out $60 for the game and if you want to play with friends you have to pay extra for Nintendo Online. Among Us is totally free for anyone with a smartphone.
The game will always take the shape of whatever group of people you play it with. I’ve played it with my cousins and sister, with my college friends and with my coworkers and each experience was different in its own good way. The game is all about lying to your friends and trying to figure out when they’re lying to you so comfort levels around people and the personalities of the people will impact how you experience the game.
There are many games like Among Us but the thing that weirdly makes it stand out is that you have to complete random and super easy tasks as you play the game. Unlike with Mafia or Secret Hitler or Town of Salem, you’re not just standing around in a circle trying to deduct who the imposter is. Instead, you are moving around, sticking close to people or avoiding them—all the while having to do these stupidly simple objectives. The tasks could have been made difficult to add another factor to the game but instead they were kept painless to make it easy for anyone to accomplish and to not take away from the true point of the game: dealing with the imposter.
The coronavirus isn’t the only, or even main, reason that Among Us took off the way it did. The game has been out since June 2018 but didn’t get the immense popularity it now has until late this summer. Twitch was likely the main reason for Among Us’s success. Popular streamers in Korea were the firsts to bring attention to the game in 2020 and well-known English-speaking streamers would catch on in August and help popularize the game in the U.S.
The game now has over 85 million mobile downloads and has started to show up in non-gamer spaces, most notably as memes. There are also great animated videos worth checking out—not to mention the plethora of gameplay footage that lives on YouTube, Twitch and I’m sure many other places.
Among Us is now a part of popular culture. It might not be at a Minecraft or Fortnite level of dispersion but it has nonetheless made a significant imprint on the content that we might come across. It’s hard to tell whether the game is a passing fad or one of those games that will outlive its hype. The Among Us developers have scraped the sequel they were working on to focus on improving the current game so at the very least they expect the game to last a bit longer. For now, the hype seems earned but, like the game itself has shown, anything or anyone can become sus and dispensed after enough time.
Btw, all the memes on this post are from the Among Us subreddit. Check it out for more good Among Us content. If they make no sense I highly recommend trying out the game