'Among Us' Will Give you Trust Issues

Among Us is the latest mobile gaming phenomenon, and it’s liable to have you and your friends stabbing one another in the back and levying paranoid, McCarthy-esque accusations. It’s a game about trust and, more importantly, a lack thereof.

The game is set on a spaceship, and the design is simple—you start with ten players, most of whom are crewmates, and are given various tasks to complete. One or two of the players, however, will be imposters tasked with sabotaging the ship and killing the crew. The objective of the game as a crewmate is to complete all the tasks or find out who the imposters are and vote them off the ship. As an imposter, the player will attempt to kill all the crew members or sabotage the ship’s vital systems, all while trying to fool the crew into thinking you’re one of them.

As a crewmate, you can complete various tasks to win the game for your team. These tasks, however, take a bit to complete and block the player’s screen while working on them. This means that while you’re completing a task, you’re also leaving yourself open to be killed by an imposter. Once killed, the player can no longer communicate with their team, and is left to watch helplessly while screaming “BLUE IS THE KILLER” into their phone or computer screen. This is not an enviable position to be in, and a win by task completion is pretty rare. Many players, therefore, choose to forgo their tasks and focus solely on catching the imposters. There are a couple ways to determine who the imposters are. First, and most obviously, is by seeing the player kill. If you tell the crew you’ve seen a player kill, and nobody can prove otherwise, that player will likely be voted out with a swiftness. The imposters also have access to vents that they can hide in, so if you see someone going in or out of a vent, you know they’re an imposter. It’s not uncommon, however, for the imposters to make false accusations in order to get innocent players voted out.

As an imposter, your best chance of winning lies in sewing discord, making calculated accusations, and creating a general environment of distrust. If accused, imposters will say anything to discredit their accuser, so it’s tough to know who to believe. If you’re going to accuse someone then, you’d better have good evidence, or you may be the next person voted out. In many cases, the game comes down to a matter of he-said-she-said, and players must decide who they can trust (which, really, is nobody). The game can quickly devolve into an illogical witch-hunt, with players being accused simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Imposters can also self-report their kills, triggering a voting session. This gives the game another interesting wrinkle, as innocent players are often accused of self-reporting if nobody else can verify their innocence. The fact that the game allows multiple imposters means they can work together, vouching for one another and killing multiple crewmates at once. This makes it even more difficult for crewmates, because even if someone speaks on behalf of another player, you never know if they’re just trying to protect their partner-in-crime.

This whodunit gameplay has immense replay value, as no two games will unfold the same way. Every time a crewmate comes up with a way to gain trust, an imposter will undoubtedly use that same method to fool their opponents in the future. Since the impostors change each game, someone who was trustworthy in a previous round might use the same tactics they used to make you trust them before—then turn around and stab you in the back. With the entire English language (or any other language) at their disposal, there are infinite possibilities for deception for imposters. The only constants in Among Us are chaos and panic, and it’s a game that can turn even lifelong friends into bitter rivals—in the best way possible.

-Joseph DiPietro