After the explosion of the phenomenon Among Us, the team Innersloth swerved his own plans: we run a sequel already announced, but in return the original game-which gave finished- continue expanded its contents. Today, Among Us himself is 25% bigger and better with his fourth map. Possibly even more .
The Airship setting is Among Us’s biggest boost since its brutal rediscovery. From far. Not only is it vast, but it’s packed with rooms that lend themselves wonderfully to the game’s survival, puzzle, and betrayal experience . More tests, more rooms, more labyrinths and, above all, a new batch of tricks and resources to mislead or play misleading.
Starting from the basics, and with a view to the new crew, Among Us is a social survival game spiced up with small mini-games. Up to ten players gather in a closed environment with the purpose of trying to contain a series of catastrophes. An engine that needs to be fixed, some broken cables, a power panel … However, there is an imposter among the players.
In Among Us one of the crew – at least – takes the role of a saboteur assassin. He can further spoil the circuits, hide and take advantage of the limited field of vision of the others, one by one liquidate the rest of the players. Its weak point? In essence, to be discovered.
In the face of any suspicion or clue that the alleged impostor is exposed, the survivors will initiate a chat and must decide between all, including the accused himself, whether or not to forcibly remove him from the game map. If they expel the murderer, all the others will have won the game, but if they are wrong they will have lost a valuable help and doubts about what was said and refuted will have been sown .
“It was like this when I arrived!”
And, in the process, the imposter will have achieved an extra victim that extends his advantage without getting his hands dirty. In many respects, the debate and the barrage of accusations are the salt of the game.
The debate phase is extremely important in the game. Among Us is a modern reformulation of classic games such as Castronegro’s Werewolves, with the added advantage that it is played for free from mobile phones, its price is almost symbolic on Steam and Switch (it does not reach four euros) and it is included in the Game Pass. And if arguments and suspicions are the engine of the experience, The Airship is new fuel for the game.
A huge excuse to return to Among Us
The Airship Complete Plan
As a setting, The Airship is huge and very detailed. And that he joins the Innersloth game for free is quite a claim. An addition that feels like a full-blown expansion.
And what’s better: The Airship makes us return to the starting square as players . Those games in which we did not know the name of the room we left behind, but we were not sure what we will find in the one right in front of us. Returning to the feeling of danger when entering a seemingly empty room.
Because when playing with strangers the first impulse is to discover what is in each room and how to get from one end of the plane to the other, but when you share a game with friends the perspective is very different. The need arises again to open and close the map every four wrongly counted steps if we are part of the crew, and to take advantage of it if we are the impostor.
The corner of the safe is perfect for giving scares in The Airship
The impostor behind The Airship’s aerial debacle is once again at the top of the food chain. He completely resumes his role as a wolf before a herd of lambs much more vulnerable and confused than usual. And of course, watching others suspect and react, knowing that their fears are fully founded, is part of the fun.
What’s more, it is precisely in this sense of constant discovery that this new map shines the most: in addition to the system of gears and motors that will inevitably be sabotaged, we can find new leisure rooms, stairs, platforms and even a billiard room.
Maintaining the aesthetics of the previous scenarios, but with the maturity and responsibility of a game that, even being free, has caused a huge impact and has generated millions. Because, above all, Among Us is an experience. And the truth is that nothing bad is played on consoles, although there are nuances to consider.
The good and the not so good about playing Among Us on Nintendo Switch
The bathrooms, in the living room area, work well as a hideaway or to surprise
Among Us is great to play on mobiles and PC. Its simplicity is part of the set of elements that have catapulted it to success, and the truth is that the sensations are very similar in the Switch version. To no one’s surprise, as a game it is not one of those that pushes the hardware of the Nintendo console to the limit. On paper, the transition should be smooth.
However, InnerSloth has had to make specific adjustments to maintain the experience on the two-in-one console, and the reason is one of the big problems of the Switch: its communication system. In fairness, at this point in the console’s life cycle, a voice chat system is more necessary than the Virtual Console.
During the normal course of games, Among Us works as expected. In fact, a control system is used in which we can use and alternate both the crosshairs and the buttons as well as the touch screen itself. At least when it comes to carrying out specific tasks and actions.
One of the new tests of The Airship is to get mobile coverage
Personally, I’ve gotten used to playing with my left hand on the Switch stick and my right hand using the console screen. Basically, I play like I do on mobiles. Perhaps that is why I have not enjoyed it so much in TV mode, although it is also my own appreciation.
And what happens when you have to refute, accuse or negotiate? The great novelty that came to the joy of the users of the Switch version is the inclusion of a dialogue wheel in which we can accuse, specify where and with whom we were, what we were doing at the key moment or question incisively.
In addition to this, we can remove the digital keyboard, but seeing messages written by the players themselves is the exception and not the rule. The curiosity, however, is that despite the fact that before starting the game we choose the server and language, on Switch we will see the roulette in perfect English.
Although the game menus are in Spanish, the chat roulette is in English
Is the dialogue wheel a good solution? Therein lies the crux of the matter. It works and you don’t feel like you are losing options, but the price to pay is losing the nuances of a text chat , or the tones of a hot exchange of words (and threats).
And that means that, indirectly and almost inevitably, Nintendo itself invites us to stop by Discord when playing with friends. Which, considering that the console has just turned four years old, is not normal.
However, the matchmaking system and servers is shared by all the systems where it is available. That is, like Fortnite or Minecraft, Among Us is assembled so that cross-play is the only option for all systems when playing online, opening the door to private games and establishing region and language filters. Extra point for Innersloth.
The Airship: a successful step for a new stage in Among Us
The Treasury chamber has a chamber that will deter the imposter
Among Us launched in 2018 and saw glory two years later. And how! Superdata agency registered in December 2020 no less than 500 million users. However, despite the fact that some 10 and 30 million belong to the PC version, the only paid version, Innersloth has had problems to monetize its success.
The Crewmembers and Imposters went from the video game to the meme, and from there to popular culture and great recognition in record time. And although it lost a lot of steam for a long time, the announcement and the arrival of a new map had the desired effect: the views on Twitch received an increase of 85 times more users and they repositioned it preferentially on Steam. A double milestone if we also take into account that it is part of the Game Pass.
Which brings us to the question of rigor: why was the arrival of the fourth map made so much of begging ? In essence, and as we already mentioned, Innersloth had concluded the development of the game. Even before this one blasted the statistics.
I explained [the fourth map delay] above in our last dev diary, but the popularity of Among Us was something no one expected, and it also came quite late in 2020. (Thank you !!). We considered the game over and had moved on to something else.
And while it may seem strange, things took a few months to take shape, it’s pretty normal in game development, especially for a team our size. When you work in an official capacity and need to handle multiple business needs, there are more legal considerations that need to be included rather than if it was just an add-on project or modification.
The plans Innersloth is referring to concern the canceled sequel to Among Us . Instead, it was decided to expand the game and take it to new platforms. At the end of 2020 it arrived on Nintendo Switch and its arrival on Xbox is scheduled for 2021.
It is appreciated that in such a wide scenario we can choose the starting point
In this regard, it should be borne in mind that unlike other great multiplatform successes such as Fortnite, Among Us is a project started by just five people and that it must run smoothly on all systems. Including a huge variety of mobile models.
Also, creating a map and updates is not as simple as creating a game skin and launching it on PC. Because our game is cross-platform, it means EVERYTHING should work on as many devices as possible. (All mobile models and their different versions, consoles, etc.)
You may have noticed that most of the mods to the game are focused on the PC only, as that makes development a lot easier. When a game becomes unexpectedly popular, it’s great, but it brings a host of other problems where we got caught up in new.
While Among Us has received news in the form of minor content and interesting updates, such as chat roulette, The Airship is the first great content that the game receives. A huge map that has taken months to reach the available versions of the game and that leaves the game in an interesting position: Now what?
With the team taking positions to expand the game in content, hiring new staff, and the vision of coming to new systems, Innersloth’s priority must be to retain this new boost in popularity. An objective that is achieved based on news, versions for new systems, the eventual arrival of new maps and, of course, official merchandising.
The floating platform can save us more than one displeasure
The Airship is the beginning of a new and promising stage , and as a map it comfortably meets expectations: it recovers the sensations of the first games, gives a lot of play and, most difficult of all, has raised the popularity of a game that resists be considered a mere passing fad. Now the interesting thing comes: it is time to show that Among Us is a long-term project.
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