I don’t normally start playing games that everyone else is playing, however Among Us was suddenly everywhere - even as a team building event for work. I then played a bit of it, expecting something that I would enjoy for only a short amount of time. Hours and days later, I still am dipping back into matches - getting a games journalist to play your game 'for fun' surely means it must be good.
Among Us is a pretty simple game. A bunch of astronauts have made it onto a ship. Some are imposters, wanting to kill off the other players and ultimately fail the mission. Others are normal people, just going about their mundane astronaut jobs. These jobs are assigned to crewmates as soon as they start the round - shown on screen and marked off as you complete them. If everyone does complete their jobs or gets rid of the imposters, the crew wins. If the imposters are able to kill everyone or fail their mission, they win!
Going around the ship and completing tasks comes in the form of mini-games. After playing Among Us for some time, you will have your favourites and also your definitely not favourites. All of the places you need to go are also marked on your map, which is useful when it comes to keeping track of what you want to do and moving around efficiently. I quite like the wire connecting games, but find the downloading data to be boring and card swiping to be challenging.
Being alone is a challenge, however, as imposters are everywhere! Imposters can use vents to move around the ship faster and have no actual tasks assigned to them - although they do get a list of tasks that is harder to be seen as faking. Once they are in a room with a crew member, they are able to kill them, leaving the scene quickly for someone else to stumble upon. Imposters can also mess with parts of the ship, locking doors, turning off lights and getting rid of oxygen supplies, forcing everyone to run and fix them.
If a crew member finds a body, they are able to call a meeting where they can explain who they think the imposter is and why - sometimes imposters even call meetings to clear their name. Meetings are done through a chat interface, where people can vote someone out!
Among Us has a lot of fun to be had as people try to convince you that they did not kill someone - whether that’s correct or not. And that’s a big part of the fun. As much as you want to just complete your tasks, figuring out who the imposter becomes a key part of the game if you want to stay alive. All of that said, if you do die early, you can be a ghost, still completing your tasks in hopes that the ship will be ready to go.
Among Us is a very fun game. I really enjoy playing it with both people I know and complete strangers. Everything is simply done, but it’s done well, and that makes the game so much fun to play. The only real complaint I have is that I wish there was more little mini-games, but that's just because I have spent so much time playing the game that more is needed to keep me more entertained. It's just a fun game.
