Calling a piece of art dangerous is generally a difficult tightrope. Sometimes doing so usually invites people’s curiosity and ends up giving the thing more exposure than you intend. But I really say this with tearful sincerity that this work should be locked in dungeons behind dungeons so as not to see the light of day ever again.

The game is effectively mind poison, it’s a stark depressing work expertly crafted but desperately crying for help as it brings you down the same depressive spiral the creator went through. It does not pull punches and there is no hope. The author themselves committed suicide and I know friends who were poisoned by this work and thought of doing the same. I’m sure there’s people who can look past this, be unaffected even, and call it amazing for the slice of emotion it is. That it’s one of the most poignant works that encapsulates depression so well. But it is for that reason that it should never be played. I myself went through one of the worst months of my life quickly following this work and I don’t feel like I earned anything from it. I wouldn’t wish this game on my worst enemy, because I cannot think of something worse that convinces people to abandon everything they care about.

Among Us is divided into 2 phases: the meeting phase (debating who to vote out) and the roaming phase (doing tasks/killing). Because of this differentiation, the roaming phase does not interfere with aspects of the meeting phase (e.g. conversations). This leads to conversations in the form of debates instead of split-second decisions. In that respect Among Us is closer to the original games in the genre like Mafia and Werewolves. Outside of meetings, conversations are not permitted, which shifts the focus to stealth and intel gathering.

Among Us doesn’t rely on a single intricate mechanic to create depth. It instead uses combinations of game elements to introduce variety. Notably, the meta and psychological aspects enrich the strategic complexity despite the underlying mechanics being simple.

Let us consider the core element of the roaming phase: routing. During this phase, the main focus is deciding where to go. If there were no impostors in the game, this would be a simple task of pathing to finish the current tasks as quickly as possible. The presence of an impostor adds an extra layer of complexity: crewmates need to also gather intel regarding where other players are located. In the first round of the game most of the decisions are based on meta-knowledge about other players: individual strategies for intel gathering, tasks players tend to go for, solitary vs group players, how they tend to play as a Crewmate/Impostor, etc. Another option is to take a risk to clear a player by sticking with them (i.e. using yourself as bait). This is a double-edged sword, however, as the Impostor can choose not to go for an easy kill, gaining the trust of the Crewmate testing him (a.k.a. “marinating”). Such risks play a central role in the game. For instance, players that have vital information would avoid dying at any cost so that they can bring it to the meetings. On the other hand, a Crewmate may also want to die:
- sticking to someone that they suspect is an Impostor to tie their hands even by risking their own life.
- to use the noclip and faster speed of being a ghost to finish their tasks faster
- to clear any suspicion over themselves (so the other Crewmates don’t mistakenly think that they’re an Impostor).
Later on, with information from meetings on who is likely to be an Impostor or a Crewmate, more elaborate routes can be devised. Players can also use meetings to gather information about other players’ tasks in order to predict their routes next round.

The emphasis in meeting phases is on deductive and conversational aspects of the game. The information we get in the roaming phase alone is usually not good enough to paint a picture of how the whole round played out. Thus we need to make assumptions based on some kind of deduction. On top of that, the meetings give us information from other parties in the game, letting us make even more accurate deductions to find the Impostors. With good game knowledge enough crewmates by sharing all information, the impostors would be found. (Except in some weird cases where everyone was just speedrunning their tasks, and not getting any information at all). However, it would be foolish for the impostors to let the crewmates do as they please, and this is where the conversational aspect of the game comes into play. In the scenario that the kills haven't been clean in the game (this means the blame for the kill can't be pinpointed to a single or a small group of people), the impostors won't have any benefit of letting the conversation go on untouched. The most direct way to disrupt the meeting conversation is through lies. With a lie, the information deduction alone would not be able to get to a correct answer, though this depends on the type of the lie. A stronger, more direct lie could change the narrative in a predictable way. It can be used to frame or clear someone. Yet such lies would be easy to trace to the liar. They can be more easily found by conflict with other known information, and thus could backfire. It requires a lot of information from the liar, to be able to pull off such a lie. Also, they have to seem trustworthy since they usually won't get backing for that false information (outside of their impostor partner). More importantly, such lies could be found out in later rounds of the game. While it could pay off this round it could cost the impostors the game in the end. More common and useful lies would be a small change of information somewhere deeper in the deduction. (Further away from clearing or pinning someone as an impostor and more about basic information). The benefit of that lie is that it is hard to trace to the liar, but at the same time, the effect is not as clear. However this could again be used - while it wouldn't frame someone for a kill or clear someone, it is effective in wasting time. It is also a safe lie since it might be considered an error rather than a lie as well. Honourable mention to lying by omission. Depending on the context it could be either of 2 types of lies above, and it could even be safer in most scenarios.
Something even more common than lying is conversation control. There is a time limit on each meeting, and players have one button per game they could use for meetings. Note that some meetings can't be extended by those buttons, as the impostors could win if there is a wrong decision in those meetings. Because of that, it is important to be efficient with information. Getting all information out of all players, and sharing deductions from everyone is easier said than done in that short amount of time. This is why the flow of the conversation is important - and also this is where the impostor has an advantage. The impostors know how their own kill happened (and potentially even the kill of their partner) so they know which information is vital. Thus if they control the flow of the conversation they can waste a lot of time on useless information and deductions out of players. This could be used in combination with a lie and to reinforce the lie, by not letting conflicting information in the conversation. Of course, all of this has its own risk, as being wasteful of conversation time is suspicious. An important thing to be noted is that the impostors' lies and disturbance of conversation have an important side effect. It isn't just the impostors that have to deal with scrutinizing their information and deductions, all information would be scrutinized no matter if it is true or false. This is also dependent on the player itself, other ingame information, as well as psychology and meta. Because of this, the players should also worry about their trustworthiness and not just figuring out the killer. You might have everything figured out, but if you can't say it in the short amount of time and convince others, you can't do anything. Even worse someone might undermine your trustworthiness and bring you down - you have to both be good at deduction and conversations to win. One anomaly from this is that there are actually now reasons for crewmates to lie. Saving time, being trustworthy and even catching lies from another player. This does have an innate risk, but it would be often a better choice than telling the truth.

An important element to the deduction is the intel gathering itself. It was mentioned early, but there is an additional aspect to the intel gathering - attention. There is a lot of information that a single player can gather in a single round, but remembering it all isn't an easy thing to do. If there are more alive players, or if the round itself is long, holding old information becomes trouble. While often this information is discarded, if there have been and early kill, without such information it would be untraceable. The intel generally consists of where we saw each player, where they were headed and what tasks they were doing. The hard part here is that you need to remember all this information relevant to the time. Memorizing this information is relevant to some major event, or just a rough estimate of the time is hard enough on its own. Yet, the player might even opt-in counting seconds to give them more precise information in time. Not only that, but it gives information about kill cooldowns, sabotage timings, precise way to estimate if anyone is faking tasks or not. Also, it could give them information about all the possible positions a player could have reached from a last seen position. This could be vital information in determining who are the plausible killers for some kill. Less decisive, but also important but more difficult, it could also be used to catch a lie. This is done by simulating the path given by some player and comparing how well it fits with the information given by other players. Needless to say, doing deductions, counting precisely, keeping information, and making decisions for the route the player would take all at the same is an extremely difficult task. This is most likely impossible to perfect, so there is always going to be a human error of some kind. Related to this, the tasks themselves, while easy to complete and master, could affect the attention of the player. This could lead to some error either in time management or in the information they are trying to keep in their mind. On a side note, tasks also play into the information gathering aspect of the game. They obscure parts of the screen, leading to less information for a player. Also, they might only see a small feature of a player, and not be able to determine who that player is.

I would like to mention a few elements important to impostors in the roaming phase, on top of the things that have been discussed so far. Impostors have much more freedom in their routing. They still have to follow some rules so that they are not caught faking tasks, or having suspicious routes. But even those rules can be bent because of the lack of perfect information in the game. It still carries some risk, but it is unlikely for them to be caught for that. In turn, they can route solely on gathering intel and unique to impostors - setting up kills and denying information. Impostors have the advantage of bigger vision range - allowing them to gain information, without others gaining information about them back. Sabotages also are a great way of denying information. Lights deny information around the players and are also a good way to set up a kill. Communication is a way to deny long-range information. While not a great way to set up a kill (it is more situational) it is a better sabotage to call in-between kills to screw with information. Vent usages could screw up the timing of some people and the impostor could get a clear for the kill.
What should also be mentioned about the game is that despite its high skill ceiling, it is an easy game to get into. The game involves a lot of risks (which introduces luck) and it also involves expectations of players to play in a certain way. Because of that, the inexperience of newer players leads to smaller expectations on them, which in turn gives them more leeway. They are more likely to be overlooked as impostors, which is a bonus both as impostors and crewmates. Even when people get a better understanding of the newer players, they would still be given more leeway on certain actions as a crewmate. This allows more intricate routes as impostors and makes them more trustworthy, which gives them more of a fight chance.
The meta aspect is one of the important things of the game, as everything ties to it. This is also why the game works much better in a group of the same people rather than random groups. Understanding how other people play and act, and also how other people perceive you, is an essential tool you can use in the game. A unique effect of this is that a lot of your actions are going to have consequences even outside of the game that you are currently in. Thus you need to accommodate your crewmate playstyle to fit your impostor playstyle. Doing the opposite is harder, as the better player you are the more other people demand of your playstyle with a crewmate. Also, you can also set up strategies in several rounds, building trust for specific situations, to use it as an impostor in another round to win. You can't keep using that same strategy constantly, which is why you have to keep planting new seeds and adapting your strategy - you reap what you sow.

The game is not without issues. While all the things discussed so far exist, their relevance depends on the used ruleset. The bright side is that the game opt-in for a lot of options to let the people change the settings. Yet even with those settings, the game is still heavily crewmate sided, especially as players improve. The default settings are even more cremate sided, but that is expected in a game with a lower skill level, where impostors would have more of a chance. As players improve, options become more and more restrictive, and eventually, even house rules have to be introduced against some "cheese" strats that can be used to make the game fair. The maps are also a good example of this, at a high enough level all maps but one are unbalanced.
Sked is heavily shifted in crewmates favour. This is due to the lacklustre vents and the 8-like layout of the map, making it hard to find bodies and deny information. Mira is shifted on the other side. It's all interconnected vents, combined with the decontamination area and the weak information tools for the crewmates lead to this shift.
Polus is the most balanced map of the current 3. Its layout allows for a lot of complexity and room for impostors to play out, while also giving the crewmate strong information tools like vitals, admin and cameras. The only downside for that map is the lack of an equivalent of the oxygen sabotage (it isn't there for lore reasons), which doesn't give impostors a good tool for dealing with groups.

In conclusion, despite its simplistic look, the interaction of the mechanics of Among Us leads to deep gameplay. The game shines in its conversation aspect and has attention intensive tasks (not the ingame tasks) to do outside of the meetings. All those things are combined with an intricate metagame.

I don't generally like being vulnerable, publicly. Even my most personal write-ups tend to be at least a little bit structured to guide around pain points that I'd rather not disclose, boiling down thoughts to more readable ideas that I don't need to haunt me. I don't really have that luxury today.

My uncle died yesterday, and we were close enough to where today I woke up staring up at the ceiling regretful, toiling around in my own head with a fog of thoughts that even now still permeates. I went through the rest of the day so far trying desperately to act as if nothing happened, driving with FFXIV music blaring out the car speakers, taking care of responsibilities with the best smile I could feign. Then I got home, and loaded up this game again, drawn to it searching for comfort. After an hour I started rewatching cutscenes, reading things about the game again trying to reexperience the same feelings that brought me solace. The game's chock full of them after all, with a dying man sitting at the bench with you giving last thoughts on a world and life he knows has dealt him the worst hand, to a scummy kid who is envious of his brother and still is even after his death not realizing how much he's trying to fill that hole in his heart that's been left. An old couple welcomes me in with smiles on their faces as they continue to grieve, just my presence being enough to remind them of what once was, but still they look forward hopeful.

I'm crying again as I attach myself to these stand-ins for loss, those depressing but not lonesome stories that help me grieve on my own time. This aura permeates through the entire narrative, as characters not so much different from my feelings of today pull off the same images of trying to act like everything's ok, and even the most naive cocky individual of the party has to come to terms with a hospitalized lover who he now wishes more than ever that he could've spent just one more minute with. I wish I had more time too, the last memory of my uncle is going to be me moving around stuff in his house while he can barely move about his home, and then after helping when he offers me and another sibling to stay and watch a movie with him, I say that I have to go home as it's getting too dark to drive. I still don't know whether my leaving was out of apathy, or cowardice, and I don't know which is worse.

And this game rejects apathy, it pushes to understand these feelings I struggle with today, an ENTIRE cult founded to bring the fall of all is juxtaposed with a desire from those who have suffered the most to keep living. A disgusting choice is thrusted towards the player and what's best isn't to remain ignorant but it is to defy this fucking downfall. It's hopeful, in the end, not wallowing in sorrow, even when the ending is still painful.

Not to say that this is a perfect simulacrum of these discordant thoughts, the combat ensues listlessness even in this version that tries to right wrongs of the flawed original. You walk multiple floors fighting enemies on passable at best strategies thinking about how it'd be nice if we were back several minutes ago to feel feelings at a scene again. There's even what would become late Atlus's problematic bullshit with hots-for-teachers and terrible handlings of lgbt, and that only spreads more poison over time for me. It just makes me angry, bile held and punches I wish I could throw at something other than air.

But the game still very much speaks to me, just putting out these thoughts after every couple minutes of tears and thinking of what this MEANS to me, what it represents, what it is, is helpful. I don't know if I can entirely recommend, or hope that the same will stand true for most individuals, not that it matters I guess. Please spend time with your loved ones if you can, I'm surely about to drive once more to be with family and mourn together while I still struggle not to fall myself.