when do you want to play Among Us?

[K]

What is Among Us?

It's a social deduction style game in the vein of Mafia or Town of Salem. There's 10 players that are working to fix a spaceship while 1-3 impostors sabotage systems and kill off players. Players can report a dead body that starts the real meat of the game: the discussion. You get a minute or two to discuss what happened and accuse players followed by a vote. Whoever gets the majority of the votes is ejected off of the ship. Crewmates can win by ejecting all the impostors or by completely fixing the ship. Impostors win by killing all the crewmates but there also a couple of mission-critical sabotage targets that have to be fixed within a certain timeframe.

So how do you play?

As a crewmate, your most basic job is just to complete your tasks. Everybody gets a list of tasks to do that once completed, fixes the ship and wins the game for the crew. Tasks can vary widely in what they require, some just make you sit for a length of time while others are more akin to really easy minigames. Take note of how long certain tasks take because the most important job is looking out for the impostor. Did someone "finish" a task too quickly? Are they avoiding the mission-critical tasks like fixing o2 or the reactor? Are they following you around? Going off by yourself to do tasks can be less important because it makes you a target and also makes it harder to gain information. Moving around and taking note of which players are where can help you narrow down the suspects when a body is discovered.

As an impostor, your job is to kill everyone. Impostors can kill, vent and sabotage. Kill is self-explanatory, you immediately kill a crewmember, leaving their gruesome corpse on the ground but kill has a cooldown before it can be done again. Vent lets you hop into a vent and emerge in a different room, great for getting away unseen although obviously it's suspicious if you enter a room and aren't seen leaving. Sabotage lets you break various items around the ship. Breaking o2 or reactor forces players to fix them within 30 seconds or they lose, lights makes it harder to see and sabotaging a room closes the doors for a short period of time. You also get a list of fake tasks so that you have some plausible deniability during discussion but you can't actually do them. You can just hang around near the task item for the appropriate length of time to throw crewmembers off the scent but some tasks have a clear visual component that can't be faked, like medbay and shooting asteroids. During discussion, you can try to accuse people who were alone or turn the tables on your accusers.

Overall, the game is super fun but much more so with friends. It's super cheap on Steam and free (with ads) on mobile, it even supports PC crossplay. Oh and I also recommend turning on mouse + keyboard controls so that you can sabotage and move at the same time.

 

@Mr. Meacon Moneybags @apsham @damsher hatfield @King Ellis @Rukaru Shida @Troy @Ollie @ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster @Summers

I think all of the above are playing, anyone else? Any chance of getting a few games going?

[Monkey D. Lars]

Sounds like a fun game. 

[probablyoliver]

I want to play Among Us all the dang time.

[K]

anyone free tomorrow?

[apsham]

I'm about 4 hours behind all the UK guys. I am free entirely for the most part on Friday-Sunday, and in the evenings from 4-7 or so I'm usually watching Ollie's Twitch and moderating it - but I could run both at the same time even if he's not involved. I know we're looking at doing some Among Us on a community stream as some point as well.

[Kyle]

I'm free basically all the time so I can definitely play tomorrow.

[Meacon Keaton]

I’m in the office from 8-4 EST but I’m game when I’m home.

[Monkey D. Lars]

If there is a spot left, I have the weekend off. And nights shifts during the week. 

[gunnar hendershow]

Weekends are almost always good for me. During the week it's tough before 6 or 7 EST on most days. Out of curiosity how long does a typical game take?

[Paton]

I'll play. Timezones are a thing, I keep forgetting.

[King Ellis]

I could do some evening (UK time) stuff and weekend too.

How would we handle the voice chat side of things? Is there an in game thing or are we talking Skype or Discord or whatever the kids use nowadays?

[apsham]

Doing it through Discord would likely be easiest.

48 minutes ago, damsher hatfield said:

Weekends are almost always good for me. During the week it's tough before 6 or 7 EST on most days. Out of curiosity how long does a typical game take?

Not very long at all.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

If I am free, I would love to.

[Meacon Keaton]

1 hour ago, damsher hatfield said:

Weekends are almost always good for me. During the week it's tough before 6 or 7 EST on most days. Out of curiosity how long does a typical game take?

Each round is like 10 minutes or so. Obviously depends on how many people but you could get several games in even if you play for an hour.

[Monkey D. Lars]

Does discord work well on your phone?

[Kyle]

12 minutes ago, Monkey D. Lars said:

Does discord work well on your phone?

I dont think I've ever had any issues with it.

[Monkey D. Lars]

Would love to play this game without playing against randoms. These guys can be so annoying, most of them leave after they are dead instead of finishing off their tasks. Or you kill someone without anyone near, a guy in the chat says it is blue because my mate next to me got killed and he told me. lol.

[apsham]

Discord should be fine for the phone, yeah - it's generally designed for ease of communication while gaming so that's why I figured it'd be a better call than Skype.

[gunnar hendershow]

I use Discord primarily on my phone. Works great.

[Monkey D. Lars]

I'll install Discord!