By Raven Lirio
General Manager
Compared to the Animal Crossing: New Horizons boom from spring, a new game has moved to the top games for 2020. It’s not Minecraft or even Angry Birds—instead it is an older game named Among Us. This very simple, yet addicting game has been topping charts since the end of the summer and continues to spread to both popular gaming YouTubers and non-gamers alike.
Being in a virtual environment for the summer proved to be a challenge for many students on campus. Students were setting up Zoom calls with friends to try and keep up to date with the gossip of who made the best pillow fort in quarantine and finding ways to beat the boredom of being stuck at home through Snapchat filters and Tik Tok challenges. This kind of socializing is great for some, but for a gamer like myself, I spent most of the summer playing World of Warcraft in between balancing a virtual job on campus. While not every student is an avid gamer like myself, the rise of Among Us as a game for all ages has slowly crept into the conversations of students online.
The game is played either for free on mobile devices or for $5 on Steam. There are a total of 10 players able to play in one game room at a time. Similar to mafia, the game has two roles: crewmate and imposter, each with their own set of objectives. Roles are assigned randomly at the start of the game but traditionally there are 8 crewmates and 2 imposters. However, there’s a catch—there is no talking during the game.
Crewmates are given a list of tasks to complete throughout the game, which takes place on a ship. They run around completing different tasks on the map to win while also attempting to find the “imposter” among them, but I will cover that later. If crewmates find all the imposters or complete all their assigned tasks, they win the game.
Imposters have two main goals, blend in with the crewmates and kill all of the crew while avoiding suspicion and sabotaging the ship. They have a number of options which include forcing players to run extra tasks so the ship doesn’t explode, which will result in an imposter victor. They also have the ability to pass through vents to travel quickly around the board and close doors on unsuspecting victims.
When a player is killed, a body will be left for other players to find and report. This is where the real game begins. When a body is found and reported, it enacts a meeting. This is the only time in the entire game that you can talk to other players. This very much turns into a flurry of alibis and pointing fingers to try and figure out who the imposter is. At the end of discussion, players can choose to vote a member off the ship if they believe they are the imposter. This proceeds until either the imposters are all voted off or everyone is killed. Players can also call an emergency meeting if they think they have evidence to vote someone off.
While the game seems slightly morbid, a number of Lutes have reported being addicted to playing small games, which last anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes, in between classes. The cute spaceman avatars come in a number of different colors and hats to match. The ease of playing the game and the simplicity of finding a killer is reminiscent of a murder mystery.
One of the hardest parts of the game is never knowing who to trust. You may think someone is innocent but the second you turn around, you’ve been betrayed. Unlike the Hunger Games where your game ends the moment you die, you can actually still continue the game as a ghost. Ghosts crewmates can still complete their tasks and watch other players finish the game. Ghost imposters can still sabotage the ship to help out other imposters who are still alive and undetected.
Overall, it’s a super fun game that is easy to learn and fun to play among friends. Whether you’re playing imposter or crewmate, you each have your own agenda and you can choose how you want to play. Many strategies include partnering up to keep safe, having another player provide an alibi for your kills if you’re both imposters, riding solo while avoiding any and all players just in case and watching footage in the security camera rooms which show some parts of the map, so you can see a kill and hit the emergency button.
Next time you’re looking for a fun and free game to try out with your friends, I highly recommend giving Among Us a try and see if it stretches your friendship more than a game of Monopoly.
In the words of junior Peyton Noreen, “Among Us is a super fun game about lying constantly and betraying your closest friends until they cry.”
