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Among Us: sneaky ways to succeed as a Crewmate or Impostor

Find out which one of your friends is a dirty saboteur! Among Us is the party game designed to make or break your friendships.

It’s time we sit down and have an emergency meeting on why we all need to try out Among Us. You can play this popular space-themed game with up to 10 players online — it’s even free if you decide to get it on your mobile device.

This genre of gaming where we step away from the competitive e-sports world and enter a more casual zone has hit a niche with many popular online personalities. With Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout hitting the scene as a goofy battle royale, Among Us is here to carry the baton with its mafia/werewolf/whatever-you-wanna-call-it whodunnit style shenanigans. Here’s how to play.

among us

Introduction

The game splits your group of friends (perhaps soon to be ex-friends) into crewmates and impostors, a clear distinction between good and evil. The map is divided into sections with corresponding tasks and functions, with three different locations to choose from. Each stage is given a meeting room to call for ’emergency meetings’, a surveillance room, and an administration room that gives only the location of your crewmates.

The crew are then burdened with space-related chores (apparently you still have to take out the trash in space) in the form simple mini-games. These tasks vary in the time that it takes to finish them and the crewmates are given a victory upon completing all of them.

Although this may sound easy, the impostors are there to up the difficulty by interfering with your crew. They are given the horrible power to kill your crew members, sabotage sections of the map, and traverse through vents, basically teleporting around designated areas like sneaky space assassins.

All players can report dead bodies, which begins a meeting (or they can start one on their own in the meeting room) to discuss and finally, vote off a player if they seem suspicious enough. Crewmates can win if all impostors are identified and voted off, but the contrary will occur if the impostors get away with enough murders.

Basic Guide: Crewmates

So now you know the rules, but how can you win? Well, despite being a casual party game, there is a meta — although it’s hardly as oppressive as the ones in more mainstream competitive games. There are certain tactics and tricks players can employ to increase their chances of victory and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t know them.

Crewmates are advised to work together and look for evidence — you must discover who’s good and who the dirty impostors may be. As completing the tasks is an act of futility if the impostors get to kill enough of your crew, it’s perfectly viable to move around in groups and complete your menial chores at a slower rate.

So what are some tell-tale signs to distinguish between real and fake crewmates?

The vents are shortcuts that only impostors can use. Take note of their locations and pay attention to see if anyone is moving near them. No crewmate should approach these vents and if anyone pops out of one, then that player is an impostor. Players using the administration room can easily identify any strange instances of players disappearing and appearing into rooms, and healthy discussion can pinpoint an impostor’s failed attempt to blend in.

Communication is crucial and the game encourages you to play detective.

There are also certain tasks that only crewmates can do, so it’s critical to use these as an opportunity to establish allies you can trust. The map shows visual interactions when a task is being completed, so pay attention to these signs when travelling in groups. Examples include the beams of light that scans the player in Med Bay or the lasers that shoot asteroids in Weapons.

Conversely, if you see someone doing one of these tasks with no interaction, that player is most definitely pretending to do a task. Thus, impostor.

Don’t abuse meetings, rather contribute as much as you can to them. Players are forced into complete silence until an emergency meeting or when a body is found, so make full use of these precious seconds. Give all the information you have and collaborate with your friends to identify the impostor. Try to single out any suspicious behaviour whilst proving your innocence.

Remember, two impostors means that they can cover for each other — always be on the hunt for discrepancies. Just don’t be like these guys:

Basic Guide: Impostors

Impostors have the numbers against them, but the odds are with them. With your little bag of tricks, it’s up to you to deceive and carve your own path to victory. Like the crewmates, it’s never wise to jump the gun, and gathering information at the beginning of each game is a must.

Always make sure you kill without being noticed, and remember surveillance cameras are marked by a red dot when they’re being used. We’re not saying you shouldn’t virtually murder your friends at the very beginning – just cover your tracks up like the good serial killer your are.

Make smart use of the vents, they can help you leave a crime scene but will become your bane if you get caught using one. Make sure there are no players to catch you in this act!

Big groups are always tricky to kill off, especially when your kills are given a long cooldown. Sabotage areas (may we suggest killing the lights?) to create chaos and confusion within groups. This will be the prime time to track down anyone that ends up alone.

As more players die, you will become the target of suspicion and doubt, meaning most games of Among Us require pro poker levels of deception to win as an impostor. Consider all your options during these meetings, take any chances you get to shift the blame, and you may even kill off an innocent when voting.

It’s crucial that you act and sound like a crewmate to all your peers.

The Aftermath

Despite the high tensions, Among Us is a hilarious game. It’s become an attractive destination for Youtubers and streamers, given the content is fresh for both the creators and viewers. We suppose the appeal is that it’s more than just a game – it reveals an uglier (and much more entertaining) side of the player under duress.

Whether it’s yelling at the one person that sits in the surveillance room all game, or repeatedly apologising to friends after voting them off, Among Us will truly test the mettle of your friendships like no other. It’s an interesting way to spice up your day, and you don’t even need to be a gamer to play.

Among Us is free to download onto your mobile devices and it costs $7.50 on Steam with a couple of DLC cosmetics for sale, but the experience is practically the same on both devices. We’ve noticed that the servers are sometimes harder to connect when playing on smartphones, but it does make an excellent entry point for anyone who wants to try the game out.

If all your favourite people play the game, it’s no surprise that you’ll want to download it as well.

But how did Among Us get so popular?

Created by InnerSloth, Among Us has rapidly boomed into one of the most popular games of 2020.

This isn’t an unusual occurrence, as seen by the huge popularity of other quarantine-friendly games such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Fall GuysWhat’s different about Among Us, however, is that the game initially came out in 2018.

InnerSloth credit the initial boost of interest in Among Us to a popular Twitch streamer called Sodapoppin, whose stream inspired many gamers and other streamers to give the game a go and discover its potential.

When the game was released in 2018, most people didn’t differentiate it from any other run-of-the-mill indie multiplayer game, but now even the producers are shocked at how beloved the game has become. That production team, by the way, was made up by three main people; Forest Willard, the primary coder, Amy Liu, in charge of art, and Marcus Bromander, the animator and designer.

The extreme popularity of Among Us has even halted the InnerSloth team from their sequel plans, rather choosing to invest more time into the upkeep of the original game.

The social deduction game was initially released on iPhones and Androids, and was then further spread to Steam for PC gamers in 2019. The Steam release introduced what is now one of the reasons the game is so popular: its online multiplayer. One of the biggest appeals of the game is playing with ‘randos’ across the globe, trying to convince them that you’re totally innocent, or aiming to garner enough trust to later stab them in the back.

The jump in popularity for this addictive game has inspired online creators to go crazy as well, with tons of fan works created every day, ranging from comical videos to somehow heartbreaking images of children left behind. In the Among Us fandom, memes reign supreme.

Oh yeah, there’s also been a lot of hyperrealistic – and very scary – Impostor artwork and fiction.

 

Find out more about Among Us here. The game is free for mobile download, and only $7.50 on Steam.