By now, you’ve probably heard about the mobile game “Among Us”, given the amount of people discussing and making memes of it. The popular game was released in November of 2018 and didn’t see an inch of success at first.  So, how did the game rise to become one of the most popular games in the world?

According to one of the developers, Jack Dulop, he explains that, “In the first six months of the game it had an average of 8.2 player count. As of September 19, 2020 it peaked at 388,385 players on stream. It’s the 3rd highest played game, the most viewed game on twitch, and it’s taking over youtube. Never give up.”  It was first popularized by Brazil and Korea, then spread to the US in September. 

If you haven’t played or seen anything about this game here’s the concept. It’s very similar to the well-known game, “Mafia”. There are 10 crew members working together to fix their ship that has crashed, but one player is picked randomly to be what’s called the imposter. The imposter’s job is to kill and sabotage the other crew mates before they finish their tasks and fix the ship. The entire point of the game is to convince the others in the game that you’re not the imposter, even if you are.

As the game continues so does the paranoia, the imposters can even crawl through vents to hide or move to another room stealthily.

Soon enough, kids began to see their favorite Youtubers and twitch streamers such as Jacksepticeye and Ninja playing this game, which most likely peaked their interest even more than before. The creators of “Among Us” were initially planning on making an “Among Us 2”, but due to so many people enjoying the first they decided to just update the original with new tasks, colors for your characters, and updating the software in general. 

This game has brought so many people together, in more ways than one. In my personal experience, a group of classmates that I didn’t know before asked me to play with them and it completely got me out of my shell. That would never happen as quickly if it weren’t for “Among Us”. 

This game is fun for people of all ages, and will definitely bring you together with the ones around you. It’s available on the App Store, and to download on Microsoft. They are also currently discussing releasing a PS4 and Xbox version of the game.