Imagine being put into a spaceship as an alien with one job and one job only; to kill your crew. You roam the ship like any other alien would, seeing other aliens, completing tasks, but little do they know… you’re the imposter. Now you can stop imagining and turn this into reality with the hit game Among Us. If you’ve been on the internet recently, chances are you’ve come across this insanely popular app. Although the game came out all the way back in June of 2018, it didn’t blow up until this fall. So how did this small game become such a sudden phenomenon nearly 2 years after it launched? The answer is Twitch. Popular creators on Twitch were making videos of them playing and all of a sudden the game blew up.

Among Us is a game where everyone is assigned a ranking, either a crewmate or the imposter. As a crewmate you go around a ship, completing tasks and attempting to figure out who the imposter is. The imposter does not complete tasks, they are strictly there to kill the crewmates in order to win the game. To play you can either join a public game and play with strangers, or have a friend create a game and join using a private code. After joining a game, you are put into a waiting room. There, you can customize your character by changing their color, the hat they’re wearing, or by adding a pet. The host of the game is the person who started the game, and they will begin the game when the waiting room has 4-10 players. The host can customize things about the game, like how many imposters there are, the speed at which participants walk, and more. If you are a crewmate, your tasks are listed in the upper left corner. Some tasks include fixing wires in electrical, getting a scan in medbay, and swiping a card in admin. If you are the imposter you will have fake tasks listed in the upper left corner. You can fake tasks by standing where you would actually do them.

Let’s say you are the imposter. You will have three buttons in the bottom right corner that say sabotage, kill, and vent. Only imposters have these buttons. If you are in a room with another player and want to kill them, the kill button will light up as you get close to them. If you want to try and get away quickly without getting caught by another player, and you see an air vent on the floor, you can escape through it. This is called venting. However, it’s pretty easy to be caught venting because only imposters can do it — if you are seen venting it has been made clear that you’re the imposter. If you find a dead body anywhere a button will light up that says report and you should press it. If you are an imposter you can self report, which means you report a body you killed; you don’t have to, but it is a smart way to direct the blame onto another player. If someone reports a body, a meeting happens with all of the players. There, you can discuss who you think killed them via chat. Many ask what room the body was found in to see if any other players were near and could be the imposter. At the end of the discussion everyone votes a player out who they think is the imposter. If you’re not sure, you can press skip and you don’t vote for that round. Whoever gets the most votes is ejected. If the majority said skip then no one is ejected, and if there was a tie no one is ejected either. If you vote out the imposter the game will end and it’s victory for the crewmates, but, if not, the game will continue. If you want to start a meeting but you don’t see a dead body, in the cafeteria there is a table with a button that you can press to start an emergency meeting. There is also a security camera room to the left of the ship. There you can watch on cameras hidden in hallways of the ship, and see if the imposter vents or kills on the cameras.

When you die, the game is not over for you. You turn into a ghost. Ghosts can see living aliens, but living aliens cannot see ghosts. If you were a crewmate and died then you can finish your tasks to help the crewmates win. You can also communicate to the other ghosts. Ghosts can see the living chats but can’t communicate with them. The living can not see the ghosts’ chats. If you are a ghost as an imposter, that means there are still one or two more imposters living. You can help them by sabotaging the game. You can sabotage by closing the doors to a room the imposter is in so they can kill a crew mate without anyone coming in to catch them or you can sabotage things so that the crewmates will have to go out of their way to fix something. This will help the living imposter because it delays the crewmates from finishing their tasks. If you don’t like being a ghost and it gets boring then you can leave the game by pressing the settings button in the upper left corner. There are multiple ways the game could possibly end. One way is that the crewmates vote out the imposter (or imposters) and the crew wins. Another way is that all the crewmates finish their tasks along with the crewmate ghosts. If this happens the crew will win. The last way is that the imposter(s) kill everyone and they win. There are so many parts of the game, and it’s confusing at first, but once you understand it, you won’t be able to stop.

Freshman Sophia Bernzweig explained that it’s super fun and nostalgic in a way. She also said that the chat feature of the game is super cool because you can meet new people.
“It gets you to think and use strategy unlike many other things our generation participates in,” Bernzweig mentioned. Additionally, she spilled some of her great advice for when she gets to be impostor “When I am imposter I usually try to fake my tasks, use the vent feature and befriend someone so they will stick up for me.”

Bernzweig as well explained how in her Biology zoom class during her 10 minute break, she and her friends play together.

“I think the game is so popular because of how fun it is. It caters to Gen Z because it reminds us of games we used to play, like poison dart frog or mafia, just in a reimagined way.”
Bernzweig discovered the game through twitch because she would watch videos of people she liked playing it and it influenced her to play it too.

Freshman Izzie Kates, who had a funny experience, tells us about when she first played. She discovered the game on Tiktok and was super eager to try it, so she downloaded it with no idea how to play. She was super confused and kept calling emergency meetings because she thought it was funny. The other people didn’t understand what she was doing and they all voted her off even though they soon came to realize she was not the imposter. Awkward. Kates tells us that, “It takes a while to get used to the game, but once you understand it, you can’t stop playing.”

Freshman Dylan Boychuck, who has never played the game heard about the game through his friends and sister. He’s considered playing multiple times but just has never actually gone through with it.

“I think the part I would like about the game, if I were to play, would be the killing part,” says Boychuck.

If you don’t already play this viral game, I suggest you hop on the trend. With the pandemic in mind, it gives you a way to communicate with others in the safety of your own home. You can play with strangers or even facetime call your friends and play with them. This game may not be for everyone, but from the feedback of these students I think it’s worth a try.