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jp's Among Us (PC)

[September 25, 2020 12:22:21 PM]

Had fun playing this last night for a few hours with friends. While I'm not a huge fan of the "genre" (hidden traitor games) and, AFAIK, I've never played one on the computer (only played boardgames) - I think there's some interesting mechanics/design additions that make it an interesting game.

One of the things I like least about hidden traitor games with elimination is the elimination part. So, you got eliminated and then you just sit around waiting to see how it all ends? That's not particularly fun or interesting. Here, everyone can continue to play (somewhat) even if you've been killed/kicked off the spaceship. For non-traitors, you need to continue working on your tasks and hopefully get them all completed. The team can't win if this isn't the case. If you're a traitor, you can continue to activate "sabotage" things in the rooms.

What's interesting about the game is that it's also dependent on social management - the game sessions start with a crewperson saying "shhhh", the idea is that you don't talk while playing. But, it seems like you're allowed to talk during discussion/voting moments? I'm guessing that different payer groups will come up with their own house rules regarding these sorts of things - and I'm also curious how most people will engage in the private games - will most people have a discord channel open on the side? Zoom meeting? Nothing at all?

These kinds of games are also hard to get into when you're playing with a group that's already familiar with the game. Over the course of the night I gradually learned where the different locations of the ship were (important for discussions during voting - I saw "ABC" leaving comms), how to do the different tasks, and generally how to move around the map. The videogame aspects of this game actually make it a lot harder to learn/get into IMO, you have to learn the different mechanics AND also deal with the social deduction part that's (presumably?) the core of the experience.

To be honest, I would love to play a multiplayer collaborative version of this game (DLC? expansion?) where you have to coordinate/manage all the different ships' tasks and such...