The space repair and sabotage game Among Us has become a surprising smash hit over the past few months, despite its simple 2D graphics and because of its tense cat-and-mouse gameplay. Among Us sees "crewmates" prep a spaceship for departure while "Impostors" try to sabotage and kill every single other player. Gamers who enjoy the sinister mystery-solving and paranoid finger-pointing of Among Us should check out the following titles, which mix similar themes with different genres and alternate gameplay mechanics.
The narrative premise of Among Us, centered around gameplay interludes where players in a chat channel accuse each other of being Impostors and vote whether to throw their fellows out the airlock, draws inspiration from many fictional sources. The idea of a spaceship being sabotaged is nigh-identical to the opening segments of Lost In Space, where Doctor Smith apes the guise of an angel while trying to sabotage the Jupiter 2 from within. The notion of imposters near-indistinguishable from the real deal calls to mind the shapeshifting, biomass-absorbing alien from The Thing, while the finger-pointing and witch hunts closely resemble party games like Mafia or Werewolf. Finally, the social deduction and close examination of alibis is a dead ringer for classic "Whodunnit" mystery stories, like Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (and even Clue).
The following games are a good fit for fans of Among Us for several reasons: First, they're generally inexpensive and easy to access for friends who want to enjoy a party game together. Second, they share the same core cooperative multiplayer gameplay, where attempts to work together are undermined from within. Lastly, the mechanics and atmospheres of these games foster a sense of paranoia and quick-thinking, where players must analyze the actions and behaviors of their fellow players if they want to find the imposter and win the day.
Games Like Among Us: Town Of Salem
As reported by PCGamesN, Town of Salem is a game heavily modeled after both Mafia and Werewolf that takes place in a fiction version of Salem. Buckle hat-wearing pilgrim lookalikes, depending on role assignment, can be part of the pitchfork mob, secret monsters/saboteurs, or neutral civilians just trying to survive. By day, villagers assemble in the town square and vote for who they wish to execute. By night, plague-bearers, pirates, werewolves, vampires, and witches play a game of cat and mouse with detectives, vigilantes, doctors and vampire hunters, each using their distinct abilities to kill or save the residents of the town.
Games Like Among Us: Space Station 13
Before Among Us, there was another game about working to fix a malfunctioning space vessel while saboteurs attempted to undermine progress. Released way back in 2003, Space Station 13 is a graphically simple, tile-based multiplayer game. Players join customized game servers and act as the various crew members aboard a malfunctioning space station, taking on roles ranging from Engineer and Security to Clown and Cook. Theoretically, the " good" players are supposed to complete their job tasks while various "antagonist" classes, such as shapeshifting aliens, cultists, rogue robots, and spies, try to sabotage everyone else's efforts. In practice, the complicated nature of most in-game tasks and how easy it is to screw them up frequently causes space stations to fall apart in ways that make the standard gameplay experience of Dwarf Fortress look like a Sunday morning picnic. Fans have been trying to remake Space Station 13 with a more up-to-date engine, but efforts to do so have been as chaotic and messy as the game itself.
Games Like Among Us: Barotrauma
Barotrauma is a term used to describe the damage human bodies suffer from decompression sickness, making it an excellent name to use for a 2D side-scrolling game about survival aboard a gloomy submarine trawling the seas of Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter. The players in this multiplayer game take on the roles of submarine crew members trying to complete mission tasks with unique character skills in order to keep the submarine from flooding, sinking, or exploding. In a novel twist on "find the traitor" gameplay, players who enter a game server can choose whether or not they want to be saboteurs, leading to interesting scenarios where a crew could tear itself apart searching for a traitor who's not actually there.
Games Like Among Us: Unfortunate Spacemen
Imagine Among Us with an FPS structure, escape-focused gameplay similar to Left 4 Dead and Dead By Daylight, and blatant references to The Thing. That's Unfortunate Spacemen in a nutshell - a game about hapless astronauts with guns trying to escape from a forlorn outpost as a shapeshifting horror picks them off one by one. Most players in an Unfortunate Spacemen game control a group of astronauts (who, in-game, can only communicate with emoticons) who work together to complete various objectives and fend off attacking aliens with their firearms. One player takes on the role of a monster who can devour and assume the form of other astronauts, sabotage the party from within, then warp into a relentless horror of teeth and claws when their cover is blown.
Games Like Among Us: Hidden Agenda
Hidden Agenda is a 2017 mystery suspense party title released by the makers of Until Dawn. It's a cinematic, branching-narrative video game about a homicide detective and district attorney trying to catch a mysterious serial killer known only as the Trapper. Major character decisions are controlled by a team of players using free apps on their smartphones, triggering shifts in the narrative, unlocking alternate endings, and controlling whether certain characters live or die. If the competitive mode is toggled, one of the players receives secret objectives on their phone, the fulfilling of which sows Among Us-like discord among players and adds complications to their attempts to solve the mystery.
Source: PCGamesN