I’ve tried to stay away from computer games as new things as much as possible this year. I don’t play many games so a new one is never far from reach, plus I like the idea of discovering more new things away from screens and the internet. With that being said, I’ve still managed to create my own Virtual Reality game, play Mancala, and play Minecraft already this year, so it’s clearly not a hard and fast rule. Fortunate really, as today’s new thing was playing one of the biggest games over the past six months: Among Us.
Among Us is a cute and colourful game that is set on a spaceship, and although it was released in 2018, has seen massive growth in popularity with streamers over the past six months. The crew of the spaceship each has a list of tasks to complete, and if they finish all of them, they win – simple. The only problem is that one of the crew members is an imposter, someone out to sabotage and kill them off one by one so that they never complete their tasks. The imposter tries to go about their underhanded business as sneakily as possible, but the other members of the crew can hold regular votes to discuss who they think is the imposter, and kick them out. The game is essentially a game of Whodunnit for space detectives and I mean, what sounds better than that!
I played with some of my husband’s colleagues (you can play with random strangers or set up a private room) and was the imposter the first time around. This was really difficult as I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, the layout of the map or anything, and I was caught before long. After a few more rounds I began to get the hang of it and observed how other people tried to blend in and not get caught. It was genuinely so much fun playing this, I get what all of the fuss is about. Playing with a group of people you know was great as you could all discuss who you had suspicions about over the microphone. It reminded me of a game we used to play as kids at parties and Brownie camps called Wink Murder. One person is the murderer, ‘kills’ someone whilst everybody’s eyes are closed, and then tries to not get caught out by the other players.
I was a little apprehensive going into Among Us as I knew it was popular with proper gamers so I was expecting something a little more hardcore and complex than it actually was. It’s simple enough for casual gamers like me to pick up, and best of all it was free to play on my phone. I really recommend this, even playing with random people online was fun too, and the games don’t last too long.
New Day, New Thing 