In the last few weeks, Among Us has dominated the gaming and streaming world, prompting developer InnerSloth to cancel the planned sequel and instead focus on adding features and updates to the original 2018 party game. In Among Us, players work together as Crewmates aboard a spaceship or at an outpost or base to complete maintenance tasks. However, one or more members of the group are secretly Imposters masquerading as Crewmates. The Crewmates' objective is to complete their tasks, stay alive, and vote to eject all Imposters through the airlock. The Imposters' objectives are to sabotage and kill Crewmates and avoid detection. Players need to lie to their friends or recognize their friends' tells to be successful.
Many players and streamers have introduced their own rules to make the game more challenging and change up the format, including having all players in a match agree not to use visual tasks or watch the taskbar, which gives Imposters a better chance to succeed. However, such house rules aren't always foolproof. The developers at InnerSloth recognized this, and it seems many of their planned updates and new features address these areas. If players want to take these and other new features for a test drive, they can participate in the Beta for the game.
How to Access and Play the Among Us Beta
The Among Us Beta is only available for PC users, so mobile users won't be able to access and test new features unless they purchase the PC version of the game. To access the Beta, players will need to open their Steam library and follow these instructions:
- Right-click Among Us in the library.
- Choose Properties.
- Click the Betas tab on the right.
- Under Select the beta you would like to opt into, choose public-beta.
From here, players can close the Properties window and, once the new version downloads, launch the game.
The Among Us Beta currently contains several new features that may become part of the game in future updates. The first is anonymous voting. With this feature, players can't see who voted to eject certain players during a meeting, which can also add to the challenge of determining the Imposter. Another feature added is the ability to choose when and how the taskbar is displayed. Players can change the taskbar setting from always displaying to displaying only during meetings or not at all. This will pose a more significant challenge to Crewmates and will allow Imposters to more easily hide when they are faking tasks. Finally, players can also test the new color blindness accessibility feature. Rather than having players rely on colors to do Wires, there will now also be shapes to help players with color blindness succeed at this task.
It is clear InnerSloth plans to roll out more new features over time, so players interested in accessing these early will want to participate in the Beta.
Among Us is available for PC, iOS, and Android.