After a long wait, Among Us' new map, The Airship, and its accompanying account update is now live in the hit indie game on all platforms. Though the game originally released in 2018, its subsequent rediscovery in late 2020 made the social deduction game a viral hit among streamers, and the game's popularity among players hasn't waned in the months since.
Tiny developer InnerSloth has been absolutely inundated by online requests for a new Among Us map, which it revealed as The Airship at the 2020 Game Awards. Promising to introduce new tasks and much more to change up the game's somewhat limited and repetitive nature, the promise of the new content has kept many of the games' avid players regularly returning. However, the halls of The Skeld spaceship and the game's other two maps have become a little too well-trodden for even some of their tastes by March 2021, so the latest content dump may be right on time to keep Among Us in the public mainstream.
Releasing the game's first major update of the year a little after 11 AM PDT/2 PM EDT for all platforms, InnerSloth declares that The Airship map is now available for players to explore and lie to each other in. Also debuting in the update is Among Us' new account system, designed to make the game safer from hackers and from age-inappropriate use. The full patch notes can be found on the developer's itch.io blog.
In addition to the new, expansive map, Among Us players also now have access to an expanded wardrobe of free cosmetic hats. There are also a number of wider quality of life changes that arrived with the update beyond the introduction of accounts, as spawning on all maps has been tweaked and more. It's easily the biggest update that's come to the indie game since it's initial 2018 launch, and it will almost assuredly bring in a huge number of new and returning players looking to not miss out. What remains to be seen, though, is if the game's servers will hold as that influx of users streams in.
While this will sate players of all types for a while, InnerSloth likely knows that The Airship alone won't calm players' demands for a wealth of maps and roles that the base game just can't provide fast enough, at least not for long. Thankfully, Among Us has a burgeoning modding community surrounding it that turn the Crewmate-Impostor gameplay loop on its head, and these popular role-focused mods could perhaps provide the basis for a future, post-Airship content update in Among Us' future.
Among Us is available on Nintendo Switch, PC, iOS, and Android, and it will release on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One in 2021.
Source: Among Us