In Among Us, a Mafia/Clue-inspired game full of dishonesty, murder and twists, learning how to snuff out liars is the best shot you have at winning. It is currently one of the most popular games on Twitch, YouTube Gaming and Discord, with players from around the world trying to form the best strategy to survive their bloodthirsty friends within the confines of space. Among Us leads to ruthlessness and distrust among even the closest of friends, challenging players to learn how to manipulate, kill and lie with little to no remorse in the name of victory. To survive this gauntlet, you must develop specific strategies for the role you will play, whether as Crewmates or Impostors.
Press Start: The Premise of Among Us and Its Gameplay
Among Us — created by InnerSloth — is a multiplayer platform that allows for four to 10 players to play at once, using different colors to help others identify them during gameplay. While most players from this small group of 10 players will be Crewmates, approximately one to three will be Impostors. The rules that follow for each group are defined by the role a player is given.
If you are the Crewmate, the top left corner of the screen will give you tasks that must be completed. If you and your entire team can finish all the tasks and fill the green taskbar before the Impostors kill you — or you vote out the Impostors — your team wins. If an Impostor kills you or you are tragically voted out by your fellow Crewmates, you will be able to participate as a ghost. While you will not have an active role in voting out the Impostor, you can still help the crew win by completing tasks and cheering on teammates.
For the Impostors, your only task is to outnumber the Crewmates, either by killing them or simply having them vote each other out. The goal of the Impostor is to avoid detection, avoid being voted out and kill as many Crewmates as possible. If you are discovered, you can still participate as a ghost and help your teammate by sabotaging controls to kill the Crewmates or lock them in rooms to keep them from discovering a body. The key challenge is how players present evidence during voting sessions.
Discussions and voting are where both parties come together after a body is either discovered or an emergency meeting is initiated. This gives all players the chance to freely discuss suspicions and evidence while sabotaging other players. Players have the free choice to skip the vote or vote on players who don’t seem to fit in. It is important to not look suspicious, which starts with knowing the layout of the map of the world you are in.
Know Your Maps and Locations
There are three maps in Among Us: The Skeld, Polus and Mira HQ. Once the new update rolls out, players can explore a fourth map that is based on InnerSloth’s series of flash games called Henry Stickmin. To give you an idea of the concept behind the new map, you can try an HTML5 version of Infiltrating the Airship, one of the games in the series. Each map presents its own advantages and disadvantages to both sets of players in the game and understanding how the maps work can make the difference between victory and defeat. Marloes Stella’s article, “Among Us Map— Learn Your Way around each Level as a Crewmate or Impostor” is a helpful guide to the details of each of the maps, which can be especially helpful for Impostors looking for places to hide bodies. Reading alone won’t get you to victory, but knowing the maps is the best way to win.
The Skeld
The Skeld” was the first map InnerSloth released when Among Us first appeared in 2018. Without automatic locking doors, weird wraparounds or strange layouts, this level is perfect for new players, making the transition into Among Us fun and simple.
Good places to hide bodies in The Skeld include the chair in navigation, the chair and computer screen in communication, the panel behind electrical, the railing in the lower engine room, the reactor in the reactor room and the admin board in the admin room. These places make a body hard to detect and most people have to actively see the body before they report it.
Mira Head Quarters
The Mira Head Quarters is the smallest and easiest map to traverse, making it is simpler for Impostors to both get around and to get caught. Since vent systems intertwine on this map, you could potentially get from one side of the map to the other with no issues. However, door scanners, which now replace cameras, make it easier to catch Impostors.
Impostors can hide bodies on the balcony behind the satellite dish and the greenhouse, and in some cases, in the storage room and admin table, similar to The Skeld. Overall, this is the hardest map, and requires that players master the art of laying low or killing quickly.
Polus
Players of Among Us’ final stage may notice an easter egg for another game created by InnerSloth. One of the guards in The Henry Stickman Collection exists within the universes and named this map after himself. Polus is the biggest map in Among Us. Its large size can make finding bodies harder for crew members, but also makes Impostors work harder for their kills.
The big rock in the middle of the map can hide standing Impostors and dismembered bodies, and same with the giant pole next to communication and the satellite rod right next to the electrical room. These places are also great to hide if you are not an Imposter, although that may also put you at risk of being kicked out.
Big Takeaway for Settings in Among Us
The more you play, the easier it is to navigate the maps and know their specific layouts. For new players, you can click the map icon in the top left corner and your tasks, along with the name of the room, will show up as bright yellow exclamation points.
For Crewmates, understanding where to find visual tasks, wires, common tasks, cameras, door logs or certain machines will help you determine who is running around and who is doing their job, giving you credible information to find Impostors. The map layout and players’ locations are also key information for voting Impostors out.
Impostors have access to all Crewmate information, and actively watch cameras, participate in voting and help in disasters if they so choose. They also can sabotage tools that help the crew. Sabotaging electrical or communications may prove useful for Impostors, and so is using Crewmates’ tools against them to cast blame on innocent bystanders. Thus, it is crucial that both parties are aware of their surroundings to spread as much accurate (or inaccurate) information as possible.
A Guide To Being a Crewmate in Among Us: Catching Impostors in the Act
A majority of players will agree that if you play Among Us enough, you are more likely to be a Crewmate than an Impostor. The tactics listed below will ensure that you have the chance of winning and catching Impostors.
1. Establish Rules in Emergency Meetings
The first thing you should do is establish an emergency meeting and decide on the rules of how you intend to win, which can include only having groups of three, no voting on seven players, and deducing who has visual tasks that can prove innocence. Even if the Impostors have knowledge of that plan, they have to quickly establish a plan that can counteract calculated groups, safe numbers and reliable information.
2. Leave in Groups of Three
Leaving in groups of three, as opposed to bigger groups of four, avoids a common mistake most new players make. Most players assume bigger groups are safer, but in a group of four, you risk a double kill, because Impostors will probably travel in packs. If they kill someone in front of you and there are four people, odds are, the remaining two players are the imposters.
Traveling in groups of three means numbers are on the side of the crew. Impostors must wait for a minimum of 10 seconds between killings, and the odds are that someone will escape telling the rest of the team who the killer is. This also counteracts the Impostors traveling in packs because it will look suspicious if a group of three leaves but only two return. The key to victory is not looking suspicious, and one way to do that is to have someone confirm your alibi or visual task.
3. Use Visual Tasking
Visual Tasks are the best way to detect who is not the Impostor because Impostors cannot do visual tasks. If someone says they have a visual task, players will be able to see them do it; Impostors will try to refute their claims, making it clear who is lying.
Unlike Crewmates, Impostors cannot perform tasks. In order to mask this, Impostors “fake task,” standing at a task marker and waiting for the green taskbar to fill up before moving on.
Crewmates use the taskbar to identify those who are innocent and those who are disguising their actions to appear harmless. Inexperienced Impostors will leave a task before the task fills up, but experienced Impostors will know where longer tasks are and spend more time standing idly. This strategy is prone to glitches, so if someone isn’t already a suspect, it’s best to point them out rather than vote them out.
4. Save Yourself From a Double Kill and Spam the Report Button
The final stretch of the game includes five players and two Impostors, which creates the potential for a double kill. As most people finish their tasks, they will suggest groups to keep safety. However, if you group two Impostors together, a double kill could leave you with an instant win. If you are in a group of four at the end, odds are, you are about to be the next victim of a double kill.
The groups of three rule helps avoid this. If you suspect someone and their teammate are about to kill you and someone else, spamming the report button may save you. Most Impostors cannot kill at the same moment, so you can potentially save yourself and win the game if you can catch both killers in the act.
A Guide To Being a Killer Impostor in Among Us
The strategies you implement during your gameplay can help you be a cool, calculated killer Impostor. Among Us only allows communication between rounds, sowing suspicion that Impostors can exploit in order to win the game.
1. Don’t Act Sus’
It’s hard to not be suspicious, whether you are a Crewmate or Impostor. However, the longer you play, the more your arsenal of tactics will grow. Knowledge from your time as a Crewmate can help you manipulate other players and blend in.
Following people closely, accusing people quickly and with little evidence, not contributing much in discussions, calling emergency meetings early on, and quickly entering and exiting rooms with others around looks suspicious. Do not be afraid to throw fellow Impostors under the bus because as a team, you both win if you lay low and blend in until the end.
2. Be Mindful of the Taskbar
Blending in while fake tasking will help you win Among Us. Picking a place to fake task can be simple, but it also requires knowledge from being a Crewmate. You want to pick a task that requires time. Depending on how experienced the Crewmates are, they can determine the task you are doing and the length of time it should take.
A smart Impostor will select “tasks” that require a long set-up time and/or a long time to complete, such as uploading or downloading documents or submitting a scan sample. As soon as you seen the green taskbar, move along or kill your victim. Doing this helps you blend in and lulls others into a false sense of security.
3. Kill Confirmed Crewmates
You should first focus on killing players who are already clear of suspicion that other players will not vote off, leaving more suspicious players to share the blame for future deaths. As the player numbers dwindle, having players that are confirmed safe will make it easier for Crewmates to spot Impostors.
4. Be Mindful of Baiting
Every time you run past cameras in Among Us, you may notice how the light on the camera will sometimes blink red, which means someone is watching the cameras. If you are the Impostor, you should never kill while the camera light is blinking red, but you should also be aware that experienced Crewmates will sometimes turn the camera off before jumping back to catch players mid-kill.
5. Take Advantage of Voting and Eat the Clock
If you can cast blame on someone, do it. In order to avoid suspicion in the voting, you should present yourself as an actively involved Crewmate: When you offer information, it should seem important but should not actually help. Saying nothing makes other players wary of your presence. If you eat the clock, most players will either do one of two things upon hearing the final 10 seconds: They will either pick the player someone is “certain” of, or they will simply skip. Either way, that could work in your favor.
Questions to waste time and put pressure on other players could include those about tasks, where they were, who they were with and who they saw. Doing this makes you seem like an active Crewmate trying to find the killer, rather than an Impostor.
6. Sabotage Smartly
This aspect of the game involves teamwork and continuous movement. Much like a double kill, using the sabotage button can keep players away from bodies and give Imposters the chance to dominate the game. If you are an Impostor and you are using sabotage, you should note that you should always be moving, for standing idly makes you look out of place.
One way to sabotage is messing with the electricity, leaving Crewmates both literally and figuratively in the dark. Impostors can see with the lights off and cannot be seen using vents when the lights are out. It is important that if you kill during this time, that you use vents or run away quickly.
7. Be a Good Liar and Fake Those Visual Tasks (or Lie about It)
The biggest strategy that most people don’t tap into is actually one only some people will attempt since it is very risky. When someone does a visual task, it’s clear that you cannot do the task. Aside from the medbay scan, none of the other players can determine who did the task. If two players sit in the weapons room and people see the weapon go off, obviously someone is doing the task, but who? Who’s to say more than one person didn’t do it? Furthermore, who’s to say that a dead member didn’t see you do a visual task before meeting their untimely demise?
A Final Word to Those Among Us
Players will have to adapt to those around them in order to achieve victory every single time you play, weaving together the strategies listed above as they go. Developing a plan for taking down your friends is fine as long as you are still having fun, but losing friends for the sake of victory should be avoided. Among Us pushes players to fine-tune strategies to avoid suspicion and untimely death. Having a well-developed strategy is key to not only making it out alive but also achieving a victory almost every single time you play.
