Things you may not know about Among Us

Among Us is a game by InnerSloth that came out in 2018 for Android, IOS and PC. It had its greatest success in the year two thousand twenty (2020), thanks to the fact that, in the middle of the worldwide total quarantine, most of the YouTubers and Streamers on the Twitch platform began to share their matches with each other and also with friends. Turning the game, approximately two (2) years after its release, into a worldwide phenomenon. This allowed Among Us to enter the catalog of games offered by the Playstation (4 and 5), Nintendo Switch and Xbox (One and X/S) consoles. Then VR versions also became available for Quest 2, SteamVR, and PlayStation VR, created by Schell Games. Here we will tell you a little about its interesting history and concept.

The initial vision of the game was originally given by Marcus Bromander, co-founder of Innersloth, who had played the game Mafia at parties and gatherings since he was very little. And development began in November 2017. The original game was called SpaceMafia, and in it cards with tasks were dealt to the players and they could wander around a house, without a fixed direction, while another person secretly killed the players one by one, just by putting their finger on their neck. The Innersloth team then changed their minds and thought that wandering around a house was a boring environment because it was something very common, so, thinking of something more interesting or eye-catching, they opted for the space theme we know, inspired by the 1982 movie “The Thing,” which had a remake in 2011, seven (7) years before the release of Among Us, also adding other tasks that, added to the initial ones, according to Forest Willard, programmer at Innersloth, “changed several times during the development of the game.” Although despite this, many of the initial mechanics of the game were maintained.

The game was developed using the Unity engine and was designed with the idea of being a local multiplayer only for mobile devices with no more than one map. However, Bromander believed a lot in the game and did not think twice about pausing the development of another game from the studio to build the first map of Among Us, The Skeld. When they began developing Skeld, they thought of a ship in constant crisis where both crewmates and impostors had tasks. But this arrangement turned out to be stressful in testing; Willard described the playtests as painful and frustrating, and they noticed that it also did not leave much time for the detective work and the informational meetings that the game demands. Apart from the fact that the game broke during the sessions, which forced him to send the players to new versions of Google Play. Innersloth tested the game with 8 of their friends but never with the maximum number of players that the game allowed.

Among Us was downloaded at least 324 million times on mobile phones alone, of which 7.3 million were in October 2020, becoming the most downloaded mobile game worldwide for that date. In the November 2021 update, 4 new roles were added, making the game more complex and giving it more playability and deduction. For an upcoming update they have promised a mysterious new map and the long-awaited friends list.

This article is a machine translation of the Spanish original.

• Video Games
• Gamification