But as is with everything in life, Among Us also saw a decrease in popularity. However, it is far from dead and the game has a steady cult following.
Developed by Innersloth it is available for free on iOS and Android and can be bought on PC and console for a few bucks. It has very simple but tasty mechanics. Among Us is a deductive analysis game in which the players are either part of a team of astronauts who have to repair a stranded spaceship or they are the impostor, a villain with the aim of eliminating all crew members one after the other.
How to play
The game map is a spaceship where the various crew members must carry out maintenance operations on their spaceship in order to return home. The game is developed in 2D so you can move from top to bottom and from left to right and with these basic commands you can navigate the whole map. When the impostor makes his first victim or if the dead body of one of his victims is found, any crew member can call an emergency meeting. During the repair operations (or sabotage in the case of the imposter) of the ship, the players cannot talk to each other and cannot use the chat, only during emergency meetings this function is enabled. At the end of the emergency meetings, vote to expel into the cosmic void the one who has been listed as an impostor by the majority of the players. If the impostor is the last one left, he wins, otherwise the victory belongs to the crew.
The memes
As basic as it is, Among Us has the perfect recipe for creating viral content to share online thereby increasing its popularity even more. It is all about lying, deceiving, and instilling suspicion of even the most innocent of your crewmates and thus revolutionizing online entertainment. The whole game is designed to be a parody and above all to have fun with friends even if the motto has become “Destroys more friends than Uno “(the colored card game in which the first to run out of cards wins). The graphics are fun, the customizations are almost like carnival costumes with which to decorate astronauts who look more like beans in a spacesuit rather than science heroes.
Even the name of the game has become a meme, referencing, of all places, the 25th island of Greece. Don’t get the meme? It’s a nod to similar names. “Among Us” is the name of the game and “Amorgos” is the name of the 25th island of Greece.
Streamers
At its peak Among Us swept Twitch like a rogue wave. It was the most streamed game of the month of September in 2020 and the views exceeded over a billion. There is also a whole community of gamers who have downloaded the social TikTok just to view and share game-related content. The mechanics are as simple as they are effective (it's a digital version of Secret Hitler, the game in which 5 players around a table must identify the future dictator) and there is no learning curve. This made it the perfect pebble to start an avalanche: at the beginning of the pandemic Among Us had 200 average viewers on Twitch. However, Streamer xQc, formerly of Overwatch, became the undisputed king of Among Us: he alone had 11 million watched hours of his gameplay with Auronplay following him at a distance with 4 million hours. But it was SR_Kaif, a streamer with around 130,000 followers, who started it all. Followed by Admiral Bulldog (700,000) and Singsing (600,000). The real leap, however, was when the 8 most popular streamers in Korea started playing all together dominating the Asian Twitch. Only after did the game come to American and European streamers.
The future
Among Us has completely revolutionized its 3-person development studio (Innersloth). Plans for a sequel have been completely canceled to make room for the refinement of the existing game downloaded to millions of devices. Over the weekend, its average of contemporary spectators oscillates between 250 thousand and 400 thousand, a number that the best triple-A free-to-play are struggling to even touch. Fall Guys, the other big hit from a small studio was dethroned almost immediately because a party game that brings friends together generates more and more spectators and sales than a battle Royale.
In a world drenched with uncertainty and lockdown around the corner, Among Us became a perfect hangout and brought us all together. With the pandemic ending, its popularity might not be the same, but its player base still remains strong and people still enjoy playing the game.
