Far in the vast regions of space, there’s a crew completing tasks on one ship.  Unfortunately, one of the crewmembers is an imposter who will stop at nothing to murder the rest of the crew. Can the crew figure out who the imposter is before they all die?

I already summed up the plot in the first paragraph and that’s really all there is to it.  You start a game of Among Us with friends, get the role of imposter or crewmate and either complete tasks or kill everyone.

My board game group and I even have a special Among Us night on Thursdays. The game used to only have two roles, crewmate and imposter.  Crewmates solve tasks and imposters kill everyone. Now crewmates can win by two ways, ejecting the correct imposter, or completing all the tasks.

Imposters, on the other hand, can only win by killing crewmates until there is an equal number of crewmates and imposters on the ship.

However, if a crewmate finds a dead body, it’s their job to report it and call a meeting. This got boring fast. So, the game recently made an update to add four more roles, engineer, scientist, guardian angel and shapeshifter. Engineers use the vents, scientists check for vital signs, guardian angels die and protect the living and shapeshifters change their form so they can frame another player for a kill. However, there is a cooldown after every kill and power use to make the game harder. Me, personally, I prefer being a crewmate and completing tasks. There’s more to do and I’m not that great of a liar.  So, as an imposter, I tend to lose.

I know that this type of gameplay can get repetitive and makes it harder to enjoy over time. However, there are ways to keep the game interesting. One is to find the right group of players, which sounds like an after school special, but it works. The group I play with often likes to make jokes and tries to deduce who the killer is. There was another time I tried to play a round of Among Us with strangers and they just sent anyone they thought was the slightest bit sus down the airshaft. The crew killed more people than the imposters, so it was an easy win for the evil side. You can also play in different modes, such as Hide and Seek where you know who the imposter is but, instead of calling meetings and trying to eject them, you run from them and try to complete your tasks before the imposter kills everyone. So, the game becomes Dead by Daylight in space. There’s also a mod called Town of Us that combines Among Us with Town of Salem, creating more roles for the characters.  Though I don’t think they’re updating that anymore, but I haven’t really checked because I’m lazy.

Another way to keep the game interesting is to invent your own story. Remember the PlayStation 3 game Journey where you play a character you know nothing about going on a journey and seeing images that you can form your own story for? Among Us is sort of like that but less artsy.  Why is there a crew in space? Are they exploring for the sake of exploring? Trying to find more colonies because of bad circumstances on their home planet? What about the Imposter? Are they a spy for a rival organization, or maybe possessed by an alien entity?  Maybe the cooldown count representing the crewmate trying to take back control.  Okay, I stole that last theory off TV Tropes, but it does make sense.

This game is addictive and adds a social element not usually found in video games. I give it 8 out of 10; the very reason I look forward to Thursdays.