I chose to play Among Us which was created by Marcus Bromander and was published by Innersloth. The games is available for consoles, mobile devices, and PC. The game’s intended audience is pretty broad as the game seems to be rated ages 7 and up. The game suggests that 4 to 10 players are needed as it is a unilateral competition game where each player is working with others to try and find the killer(s). Players can be a crew member and attend to tasks (easy puzzles) that, if completed, make them win the game. However, the killer who is selected is trying to kill them as these tasks are being completed.
There are other actions that can take place. Specifically, once a murder has been made and the body has been found and/or reported, players can call an emergency meeting to discuss and vote on who the murderer may be. If all of the murderers are found then the crew mates win the game. However, emergency meetings cannot be called during Sabotage which is a moment in the game where one of the portions in the map is temporarily in need of fixing by the crew mates. The killer, or ‘Imposter’, is also granted the use of trap doors to travel quickly across the map and cause chaos amongst the crew members.
The game is very similar to Mafia. It has the same unilateral workings as it is a team of people versus the murderer (or imposter). However, the game is a bit different due to the ways in which normal players can win. In Among Us, the crew mates are actively trying to win the game by completing the tasks while also being able to accuse and vote out potential imposters.
In my opinion, I believe that Among Us has better role dynamics as the crew mates are much more active than the villagers and can actively try to win the game together either through voting or completing the tasks. It was nice to be able to contribute to the group’s success actively rather than standing by hoping that other members would vote for the same person as you when trying to find the killer in Mafia.
I liked playing the game as it was fun to see my friends try to get by when they were the imposter (it was also fun trying to get by myself). We laughed a lot as much of the accusations tended to be true making our games shorter than the average. It was easy to understand and get into as the rules are not too complex and each part of the game leads into another portion intuitively. A success that I would like to point out is just how well the game works. There is enough competition and contribution to winning for each person playing that makes them want to participate more. I would also say that the added features like Sabotage and the trap doors keep the crew mates on their toes as they complete their tasks hoping not to get killed.
To make the game better, I would say that creating more complex tasks or having the option to enable them might make the game more appealing to older users. I found that they were too easy to complete and at times our games seemed to finish faster as we all finished our tasks before the imposter was discovered only a few rounds in.
