Game: Among Us
Creator: InnerSloth
Platform: Mobile, PC/Laptop, and gaming consoles like Xbox & PlayStation
Target Audience: Among Us is targeted towards casual gamers and those who enjoy social deduction and party games. It is particularly popular among children because of it’s simple design and accessibility on the phone.
Player count: 4-15
Actions: Each play is either innocent or imposter. Innocents complete tasks while Impostors sabotage and eliminate Crewmates without being caught. There is a voting period where players may vote to eject a player they suspect, you may call this emergency voting period.
Player relationships: Among Us makes you question who you can trust. It is a game of deception and teamwork. The only real power that innocent players have is their voice during the voting period or completing tasks. For imposter, they must deceive players and often lie to achieve a win.
Compare: Among Us is very similar to Mafia in it’s core mechanics. Find the imposters, vote them out. Imposters, kill everyone without being caught. However the main difference between the games is their technology. While mafia doesn’t require any electronics to play, Among Us is a video game which gives it more options. For example, the mechanic of “venting” or teleporting around the map gives imposters an advantage which doesn’t happen in mafia. However, to even out this advantage, in Among Us, there is another win condition besides voting out imposters: completing tasks. This gives more things for the innocent to do. In Mafia, innocent players often feel like they can’t do anything or have no evidence to go off of, it usually just becomes a game of pointing fingers with no real evidence.
I say Among Us is better because of the added mechanics for innocent players.
The game was fun! It was peak fun during the voting meetings when players were get loud and routy to sway the vote. And the gameplay was engaging because I always thought the person next to me was an imposter.
A big fail was when crew members didn’t do their tasks. Sometimes, players don’t know about the tasks or don’t do them, so it makes it very hard to win by completing all the different tasks if no one is doing them. You can’t solo win the game.]
I would make it more clear that the tasks need to be done. Maybe add in a navigation arrow that will direct you to your next tasks instead of looking at symbols on a map.
