Why Among Us is a great game

Among Us is a game that came out on June 15th, 2018 which has just under 42 million mobile downloads in a single month and has gotten so popular, the amount of concurrent players is more than GTA V on its steam debut. If you want to know how it became overwhelmingly popular, there are two words to help you out: Twitch streamers.

Now Among Us is an online multiplayer social deduction game, in which the crewmates have to either do tasks or vote out the imposter(s) before the imposter(s) kill the crewmates. Depending on who you play with, it might be impossible to win as crewmate, due to either bad decisions made by other players, or the imposter knowing how to play the game better than you.

The crewmates’ tasks include, but are not limited to, fixing wires, shooting asteroids, inspecting samples, restarting a reactor, etc. The imposters have a kill cooldown time, so they can’t exactly go on a killing spree; the imposters also have the ability to sabotage, which allows them to activate a crisis like turning off all the lights. The tasks also depend on which map you choose, with the options being The Skeld, Mira HQ, and Polus.

The game seems difficult at first, and it doesn’t exactly tell you what to do when you first join. However, there is a practice map that Among Us has for when you either forget how to play, or learn how to play for the first time. But whenever you get into a game, unless you are on a Discord call, it might be abnormally difficult to communicate with the other players. Of course, there is also an influx of bugs that were not fixed due to the game being at least 2 years old now. But once you play for a little while, you can start getting used to the quirky in-game mechanics that can be used to your advantage.

Among Us has both helped relationships, and ruined relationships. Alexia Chacon Salas, a prominent Among Us player and senior at Galileo, said “Honestly, some of the people I play with now, I didn't really talk to. I never really talked to them because we just never crossed each other's paths like that and because of this game, we have become a bit more like friend-friends. It's really cool and it can ruin relationships but in a fun way.”