Among Us

Among Us (Bad Media)

The game is itself a impostor!

Genre(s):	Party Social Deduction
Platform(s):	Android iOS Microsoft Windows Nintendo Switch PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release Date:	Android, iOS June 15, 2018 Microsoft Windows November 16, 2018 Nintendo Switch December 15, 2020 PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S December 14, 2021
Engine:	Unity
Developer(s):	Innersloth PlayEveryWare (PS4/PS5/Switch)
Publisher(s):	Innersloth
Country:	United States
Series:	Among Us

Among Us is an online multiplayer social deduction game developed and published by American game studio Innersloth and released on June 15, 2018.

The game takes place on many different maps where players each take on one of two roles, most being Crewmates, and a predetermined number being Impostors. The goal for the Crewmates is to identify the Impostors, eliminate them, and complete tasks around the map, and the Impostors' goal is to kill the Crewmates without being identified.

Gameplay

Among Us is a multiplayer game, supporting 4–15 players, all of which are on a specific map, and need to complete their tasks to win. Up to three of these players (depending on the setting chosen by the host) are randomly selected for each game to be Impostors, while the rest are Crewmates.

The Crewmates are given tasks comprising maintenance works on the vital system of the ship, while the Impostors would try to blend in with the Crewmates, sabotage the system and murder the Crewmates.

A voting process can be initiated by reporting a dead body or triggering an emergency meeting. In the voting process, discussion begins, then players can vote on who they think is one of the Impostors. Only alive players can participate in voting. After voting, one of the players may be ejected (who will be considered dead). If "Skip Vote" got the most votes or there is a tie for the most votes, then no one gets ejected.

Impostor Qualities Among Us

The gameplay is very repetitive to this point the game might be incredibly boring, literally doing the same over and over and it's mostly just running.
- It also basically caused the situation when the game massively lost a lot of players that was even a 3/4 of the players the game had.
Playing against 3 Impostors is very hard to win as the Crewmates, due to the maps not being big enough and also having the player limit of 15.
- Some disconnection issues with the servers due to the game exploding in popularity.
- In fact, due to this, the game thinks you're intentionally disconnecting, and it will prevent you from playing for 5+ minutes.
Chat is not available at all times, meaning if you want to chat outside of meetings, you will need to sign up for voice chatting apps such as Discord or the Steam built-in voice chat. If you get killed by the impostor, you are muted for the entire match. Fortunately, Innersloth has added a proximity chat feature.
- However, while the newly introduced chat system is admittedly awful you can always switch to the normal one in the settings.
The mobile versions had some bugs and glitches, especially on Android.
The game's mechanics are oversimplified compared to other great games in this genre such as Town of Salem.
In a future update, the game added micro-transactions called beans and stars, causing the DLCs for the game to be removed. While it is good that you can earn the beans with the progression system, the problem is that you can't do the same with the stars, having many certain cosmetics locked behind a paywall in the game.
In relation to GQ #8, while the mobile versions are free, you have to pay for the game on PC, Xbox and Switch. The price may not be that bad (it's $4.99 on Steam, while it's $5 on Switch), though the greatest irony is that you're still paying for something that was made available for free on another platform.
- To make what matters worse, while playing on those platforms, they require an online subscription which means it increases the price even more than $5 for those who don't have it (excluding the PC version).
Before the release of the airship map, there were some awful updates that damaged the reputation of their game. Innersloth added a quick chat feature that allowed you to say words without typing, and it got heavily panned by audiences. The most common complaint was that you can't type anything you want, thus making it harder for the people to play the game, as now you can't properly defend yourself and you can easily get voted out for the most stupid reasons.
- Not only that, even along with the airship map update, Innersloth also introduced an account system which didn't work properly, it didn't allow you from changing your username, so you had to instead randomize it; thankfully this was fixed in subsequent updates.
- You also now have to enter your age in order to play. Which is a very questionable requirement.
- And also, since April 2021, you now have to make an account to PLAY the game without local play (with the exception of Guest accounts), killing off any potential interest of the game amongst many who refuse to do so.
As mentioned above in BQ#6, it is very easy to get voted off due to it being hard to defend yourself against accusations. Reasons to get voted off include:
- False Accusations, most of the time without any evidence
- Always being silent during meetings
- Voting as soon as the vote time starts
- Being the last person to vote after taking a long time to do so
- Being called "sus" by another Crewmate or Imposter
- Being framed by an Imposter after reporting as soon as they killed someone
- Walking away from a dead body after not reporting it, even if you didn't see it
- Self-reporting

Good Qualities

Despite some flaws, it still has enough good qualities to have page as a good media.

Tips

Here are some tips when playing as a Crewmate.
- Never do your tasks alone, especially if you are doing the tasks that can block the entire screen. Instead, do your tasks with 2 to 3 other people nearby, which can be very useful in preventing The Impostor from killing you.
  - Some rooms such as Electrical and Security are very dangerous to be in since you're most likely to be killed by An Impostor if you're in those rooms.
- To avoid being voted off, tell the other crewmates to come with you to see you do visual tasks such as the Medbay scan and the Garbage Chute tasks. Doing this with other people around can prove that you're innocent as Impostors aren't able to do these tasks.
- If you're sitting on vitals in Polus, and someone dies and that person's body is reported immediately after, and the person who reported it doesn't say who killed, then they're most likely The Impostor.
- If you stand right on a camera in Polus, you can cover it up so the Impostor can't see the blinking red light. However, you must be willing to sacrifice yourself to win the game.
- This is actually useful for both Impostors and Crewmates, but you can skip the loading animation and can move around when the game announces everyone's role is.
- Another useful thing is the Among Us Notepad, which you can use effectively as both Imposters and Crewmates (although some people think that's cheating, so don't tell the lobby, or you might get banned).
- An 1,000 IQ trick in a 1 Impostor lobby is follow a person, then if a dead body is reported, and you were with that person, you can vouch for them, because there is only 1 Impostor and you were following him/her and you never saw them kill.
- Pay attention to who does what tasks and how many types of tasks there are (common, long, and short tasks).
- If you are Engineer, use the vents to spot who the impostor is, and then call an emergency meeting.
- If you are Scientist, check if any crewmate is dead using the vitals you have.
- If you are a Guardian Angel, protect the remaining crewmates from getting killed.
Here are some tips when playing as The Impostor.
- It's recommended to make use of the vents since when you kill a crewmate, you can use the vents to get further away.
- The sabotages such as the lights and reactor meltdown can be useful for separating and killing off crewmates.
  - The lights sabotage can reduce the vision for crewmates while The Impostor is unaffected by this, making it possible for Impostors to kill someone while there are other crewmates nearby (do this at your own risk though).
  - The Communications sabotage disables the security cameras as well as the vitals screen, admin table, and door logs.
- Don't kill crewmates in locations or rooms or vent where there are cameras, if you see a flashing red light on the camera, then it means that someone is watching you.
- If you use the admin table, and if someone is alone in a particular room, you can go there and get an easy kill.
- If you know if someone is safe, kill them as soon as possible, otherwise if everyone safe is standing, they're going to know it's you later in the game.
- In The Skeld, there is a dummy model of a divert power task in the reactor, so don't fake that task or you'll be sent to space if someone sees you fake that task.
- If you see a crewmate doing the electrical download task, you can quickly vent to security, cut the camera operator's face-off, then quickly vent back to electrical as if you were still doing the download task.
- Do not kill one of the Crewmates if a Crewmate is hiding behind another one. It means that the Crewmates hiding behind the other ones set a trap for you, and the Crewmates will then know you are the Impostor.
  - However, if there is a Crewmate hiding behind another one, and there's another Impostor with you, you can kill them, as long as another Impostor's kill cooldown has already ran out.
- In the Airship map, if you are in vent in the place where a Crewmate is about to report a dead body, quickly press one of the arrows to get away to a place where one of the another Crewmates if your kill cooldown is still running out, as once the dead body is reported, the Impostors in the vents appear on them, and the Crewmates will know it's you if you don't get away from the dead body.
- If you are ShapeShifter, disguise into any crewmate and kill that crewmate you are disguising, or any crewmate you aren't disguised as. Though this could be easy for crewmates to know that you are the impostor if you are near them.

Trivia

During its first 2 years of release, the game has received very little attention, reaching a peak of only 728 concurrent players on Steam in August 2019. This would change in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic which forced people around to world to stay at home, the game suddenly became popular to the point of being the 5th most played game in the world with over 500 million players. This would have spawned the custom kill animations meme, fanarts, music videos and numerous more.
In spite of its scant budget and limited development team (composed of only three people), Among Us had, in November 2020, around half a billion users, making it the most popular game ever in terms of monthly players.
A sequel was planned, but was cancelled in favour of adding on to the original game.
Developer Innersloth was originally planning a sequel for this game. However, due to the exploding popularity of the game, they decided to cancel the sequel to focus on fixing the problems with the first game by adding monthly updates.
On October 20, 2020; U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez played Among Us on Twitch with various YouTubers to encourage viewers to vote for the upcoming election.
- The stream drew in over 400,000 viewers.
If you scan the QR Code on the pass seen on the "Scan Boarding Pass" task, it'll say "Yo holmes, smell you later".
- This is a reference to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
There was a huge hacker named Eris Loris who mainly targeted North American servers and was active in Oct. 2020 but was banned in the Nov. update.
- He asked you to join his Discord server and subscribe to the Eris Loris YouTube channel, otherwise, he said he would hack/kill your device.
- However, even after the update, in Jan. 2021, he got around the ban and is now named Sire Sirol, which is Eris Loris backwards, but this time he asks you to hack the game or get hacked.
- Apparently, he was trying to get people to vote for Trump in the 2020 election during October.
There is a glitch in Among Us where you can be both a Crewmate and Impostor at the same time. (aka a Crewposter or Inmate).
The game was originally going to be called Space mafia during it's development, before Innersloth decided to rename the game to Among Us.

References

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