At The Game Awards 2021, Among Us developer InnerSloth announced that the iconic social deduction game will be coming to VR with a first-look trailer that showed off the new first-person perspective. After claiming the awards for Best Mobile Game and Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards 2020 two years after its initial release in 2018, the game saw a decline in players and streamers this year as it fell out of the mainstream. Despite claims that the game is dead, it seems that Among Us is pushing to regain its momentum and become bigger and better than ever in the coming year with new updates and exciting content on the horizon.
After a massive surge in popularity in 2020, the hype surrounding Among Us tapered off as some players began to feel that the gameplay had become repetitive. The simple mechanics are part of what made it so popular in the first place, allowing players to jump in and start having fun right away, but the lack of depth made it difficult for the game to sustain interest for long periods of time. However, InnerSloth had been working on entirely new gameplay elements for the release of Among Us 2, which was canceled after the development team decided to incorporate this new content into the original game instead.
While the game has received a number of sporadic updates throughout its 3-year history, the November 2021 Among Us update was by far the largest, introducing leveling, an achievement system, an in-game store, and entirely new roles for crewmates and Impostors to take on. Crewmates can now be assigned the Engineer, Scientist, or Guardian Angel roles, and Impostors have a chance to be the elusive Shapeshifter. These roles refresh gameplay with a new layer of complexity and make players come up with new strategies to utilize and counter the new mechanics. Players can’t be certain that a player who uses the vents is an Impostor as the Engineer can now use them as well, and Impostors may be blocked from a killing strike by a Guardian Angel’s protection. In addition, the added leveling and achievement systems give players something to build toward between matches, alleviating some of the feeling of repetition from the game.
Why Among Us VR Is So Exciting
Now, the upcoming Among Us VR will give players yet another new way to experience the game, this time from an entirely different perspective. The VR version promises to be even more intense than the original game, allowing players to sneak, lie, and try to survive face-to-face with their crewmates as they navigate the Skeld and complete tasks in first-person. While not much is known about the gameplay of this new version yet, InnerSloth has stated that it will retain the original core mechanics of Among Us in the new 3D environment.
The announcement came just a few weeks after the major November update, and it’s clear that InnerSloth has more big plans as new roles have been promised for future updates as well. Among Us was also released on major consoles like the Playstation 5 and Xbox One this week, featuring cross-play and account linking so players can earn achievements across multiple platforms. With these new gameplay features and system updates to support a larger player base, Among Us seems to be gaining a lot of momentum moving into 2022.