Among Us is the new social phenomenon of 2020, with gamers using it as a pretense to hang out with friends or talk with strangers in a way they haven’t been able to in person. At the start of each game, you find out if you’re a regular crewmate or murderous imposter, and you must either complete tasks to save yourself and your companions or murder your supposed friends one by one without getting caught.
While the game can be a lot of fun, it punishes you for not knowing what you’re doing, and you’ll spend an entire night getting caught or killed by friends before you start to learn the ropes. Here are some strategies you should use to win the game, both as a crewmate and as an imposter.
Further reading
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- The best games on Steam
Part of the crew
Your priorities as a crewmate are simple: Complete your tasks, fix deadly sabotages, and sniff out imposters without being killed yourself. Or, if you are killed, complete your tasks and trust in your teammates to solve your murder. However, there are particular things you should do to win the game, spot imposters, and avoid falling under suspicion yourself.
Remember the tasks you’ve done
Once a body is discovered, everyone is going to look for the barest hint that someone is lying. So when people ask you where you were and who you were with, be ready to answer quickly, especially if no one was around to corroborate when the discussion begins.
In our Among Us games, when someone is suspicious, saying which room you were in isn’t enough. People will ask which tasks you did specifically. So rather than say, “I was in Electrical,” it’s better to be able to say “I was in Electrical doing wires” or “I was in Storage doing trash.” That’ll help keep false suspicion off your shoulders.
Stick with the crew, or strike it alone
If an imposter decides to kill you, there isn’t anything you can do to stop them. What you can do is try to make sure they’ll be caught in the act. Depending on the map, you’ll want to start out completing tasks in the most public areas where there’s lots of foot traffic, so you’re less likely to get picked off. Then, as the game progresses, you’ll hopefully get a better sense of which players are innocent, and you can use them as a shield while you complete longer tasks in more remote areas.
Keep an eye on visual tasks
In all three maps, if you perform a Medbay or Laboratory scan, other crewmates can see it, thus proving that you aren’t an imposter. That’s fairly well known, but you may not know that other tasks can prove innocence or guilt, assuming visual tasks are turned on in the game settings.
In fan-favorite map The Skeld, the empty garbage or empty chute task in Storage visibly causes trash to be vented out into space. In both The Skeld and Polus, the clear asteroids task causes a perceptible laser to appear every time you shoot. Finally, the prime shields task in The Skeld causes lights to turn on outside the ship, or to flicker after a second player completes the task.
If a player stands next to one of these tasks but nothing happens, it’s very likely that they are trying to trick you! Or, if you see a visual sign of their innocence, stick to the one person you know you can trust like glue.
Look out for “sus” behavior
When watching your friends in Among Us, it can be difficult to determine if their behavior is innocuous or evil: Is your friend following you because they’re doing the buddy system, or because they suspect you, or because they want to kill you? Did they run away from the group to perform a sabotage in private, or because they have one last task to complete? Being creepy in Among Us is kind of unavoidable.
Some behavior is difficult to explain away, however. If a player is standing still, away from any task, right before a sabotage event, that’s pretty suspicious. If a crewmate runs into a wall for a few seconds, they may be trying to sabotage while on the move to avoid suspicion. If someone runs behind you only to break off when a third player appears, they clearly were hoping to kill you before realizing there was a witness.
See anything like this, and it may be time to call an emergency meeting.
Don’t ghost-watch until you finish tasks
Once you die, it’ll be tempting to follow your murderer around and enjoy the show. But do your living teammates a favor and finish off your tasks first. Among Us games are ruined when the living players fix everything against all odds, only to not win and get killed off because their ghost partners didn’t bother to finish their tasks out of spite or boredom.
You’re an imposter!
After a kill, find an alibi
Once a body is reported, crewmates will start by asking “Where?” — meaning where was the body and where was everyone else. If you say you were in the reactor room, only for your friends to say they were there and you weren’t, you’re basically into the lava already. Wait to hear everyone else’s alibis and pick an unoccupied room, and they’ll probably find it “sus” that no one else saw you.
That’s why, if you have time, you should rush to another room, preferably by vent, and then find a crewmate to hang out with. Once the body is found, you can honestly say, “I was with Red in Electrical.” We’ve found that most people tend to assume a body was found right after the murder, so even if you were with someone for only a short time, people will usually look elsewhere for the imposter.
Or, if you can, lead a crewmate back to your kill
Possibly the most devious trick you can pull off is to kill someone, vent away, pick up a companion, and then lead them back into the room you just left. You’ll have an eyewitness who will vouch for you and will have no idea that you would dare return to the scene of the crime.
Full disclosure: We weren’t devious enough to come up with this strategy ourselves, but saw the genius of it after watching Grand POOBear pull it off.
Try buddying up with your fellow imposter
Usually, the smartest play is to split up and pick off crewmates two at a time: Bodies are usually discovered pretty quickly, and each discussion increases the chance that your identity is exposed, so you want to finish them off in batches. On the other hand, hanging out with your fellow imposter can have its perks.
As a crewmate, it’s scary when anyone approaches or follows you alone. But if two players approach you, you’ll assume that one of them won’t kill you with another witness present, and hope that both of them are trustworthy. So, you’ll be more likely to accompany them to the more deserted parts of the map.
That’s exactly the psychology that you can exploit as an imposter. Join up with your fellow baddie and then run around looking for lone prey. Follow them to a secluded area and kill them, and then you can vouch for each other once the body is discovered. If you’re really ambitious, you and your partner can isolate two players at once, wait for them to be occupied with tasks, and then kill them both simultaneously before either knows what’s happening.
Keep track of the number of survivors
The game ends when the crewmates complete the taskbar, or when there are an equal number of crewmates and imposters, since the baddies can no longer be forced out of the airlock. So if you’re playing with two imposters, your goal is just to whittle the total number of players down to four. Avoid suspicion for long enough, and if there are just five players left, you can kill someone in full view of the other crewmates — the game will end before they can report.
Keep sabotaging as a ghost
Even after you’re caught and killed, an imposter is free to sabotage without worrying about blending in. With your help, the surviving imposter can still pull off a win.
In Among Us late game, the remaining imposter’s job becomes much harder: Surviving crewmates who trust one another start to stay in packs, so if someone is killed, the players off on their own get rightfully blamed. And if an imposter kills someone, they’re stuck waiting for the kill counter to go down while the good guys get closer to completing tasks. So, your job is to slow down and separate the crewmates, and give your partner time to complete their work.
Most saboteurs go for the flashy attacks like reactor overloads, but don’t underestimate locking doors; players will have to wait for at least 10 seconds or flip the door breakers to escape, stalling while your partner’s kill cooldown decreases and while crewmates can’t move on to the next task. Or, try turning off the lights, which makes it harder to keep track of which players were sticking together when one of them goes missing. Finally, if your partner is down to just a couple of survivors, an emergency meeting could easily expose their lies, so save a sabotage in case you see a player heading toward the big red button.
Kill in a crowd, or when crewmates are completing tasks
Sometimes, it pays to gamble on a risky kill. Task mini-games take up about 80% of the screen and occupy players’ full attention, so even if there are multiple crewmates in a room, you may be able to kill someone and vent away with no one spotting you. Once the surviving crewmate reports the body, they’ll end up with no alibi, and crewmates who saw them with the dead teammate will hopefully vote them out too.
In late game, when crewmates are sticking together, a sabotage kill may be your last chance. When everyone heads to Fix Lights or Communications, all the crewmates will be standing on top of one another, desperately flipping switches or turning knobs; stand in the middle of the group, kill a teammate, and stand your ground, and you may find that no one saw who did it, to the exasperation of all the ghosts watching. Even if one person did see you do the deed, you may be able to convince the survivors that “she’s the liar, not me!”
Memorize the maps’ tasks
As we mentioned above, asking people what tasks they just finished is tricky for imposters, because they haven’t been doing tasks! They can say they were in Navigation, but once asked what they’ve been doing, they’ll have to try and remember which tasks are available in that room, and any delay will be pretty suspect.
So as soon as you’ve killed someone, we recommend putting a mental list together of tasks nearby that you can run off to the crewmates, so they don’t suspect you.
Who’s the imposter?
The heart of Among Us, the post-murder discussion is where all of the psychological warfare, interrogations, lying, and ominous “You’ll regret this!” pronouncements come into play. Here are our recommendations for spotting lies, fooling your friends, and most important, making Among Us games more fun.
Play with friends and use Discord
Sometimes, playing with “randos” in Among Us can be fun, but the text discussion menu is slow and unreliable. Everyone spams “where?” after a body is found, then throws out their alibis and accusations. If you’re a slow typer, an imposter can announce “Yellow sus” and have people voting for you before you can convince them otherwise. And strangers will often troll by saying they’re the imposter to get voted out, simply because they’re upset that they weren’t picked for imposter.
The optimal way to play Among Us is to jump on a chat with your friends in Discord. Mute when the “Shhhhh” screen appears, then unmute during discussions and listen to your friends’ stories. Everyone will have a chance to explain or out themselves, and it’s always hilarious when an imposter’s alibi is incredibly unconvincing, or when you can get crewmates to question one another instead of you.
Kick out false accusers
If Cyan swears that she saw Purple jump into a vent, and Purple shoots back that he saw Cyan kill White, you can usually assume that at least one of them is guilty. But if the imposter is trying to trick you into voting an innocent out, your choice is simple — assuming you have Confirm Ejects set to On. Trust the first person to speak up and vote out who they accuse. But if that person turns out to be a crewmate, just wait around the Emergency button until you can call a meeting, and then kick out the false accuser before their kill counter resets.
Be ready to betray your fellow imposter
If a crewmate says that they saw Orange kill Blue, and Orange is unconvincing in his defense, the crewmates will unanimously vote him out. You’ll be tempted to skip voting or pick someone else in the hopes of saving him, but in doing so you immediately mark yourself as suspicious once they’re identified as an imposter.
So, if they’re caught, vote them out with no regrets. Better to have one ghost imposter than two. On the other hand, if the debate is less clear-cut and you think the vote could be tight, you can play the “Gosh, I don’t know who to vote for!” card and see if the crewmates will give away their opinions before you decide.
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