Among Us took the internet by storm in late 2020. In a lot of ways, it was just what video game lovers needed in the challenging pandemic-choked year, as Among Us is a cheap, simple game that's easy for anyone to pick up. What's more, it has cross-platform online multiplayer and quick play time that lets people cycle in and out of play rapidly. It's a great casual play experience that helped bring people together during a difficult time, and it even makes for a great viewing experience too. Among Us has nearly 8 million followers on Twitch, thanks to streamers like Disguised Toast and Pokimane who draw lots of viewers while playing it with each other.
Although Among Us gains a lot from simplicity, sometimes players want more variety than randomly selected impostors can offer. That's what mods are for. Among Us has rapidly developed a very rich modding community in the last few months. The game itself is so simple that it's no trouble to make small adjustments, adding roles and expanding on the game's possibilities. Some of these mods have gotten as much attention on streams as Among Us itself, and they certainly add a lot to the game.
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There's lots of secret traitor games like Among Us out there, perhaps most famously simple party games like Mafia and Werewolf. In a lot of these games, there's a wide variety of roles that players can take up, but in Among Us, there's only Crewmates and Impostors. Naturally, lots of Among Us mods are focused on changing that. Probably the most famous mod of this type adds the Sherriff role, a common sight among secret traitor games. It's up to the Sheriff to try to find the Impostor and try to kill them. However, if they kill a Crewmate instead, the Sheriff dies too, so the stakes are high.
Secret traitor games that include a Sherriff often end up revolving around protecting that player, but there's other mods that add important roles very different from the Sheriff. For instance, one Among Us mod adds a Doctor to the game. The Doctor has the coveted power to revive a dead teammate, giving Crewmates a second chance to find the traitor. Another mod offers an Engineer role who has cameras and drones that they can use to spy on other players in an attempt to suss out the Impostor.
However, although some mods add really useful player roles, others are just plain fun. One of these mods adds the Jester role. The Jester is technically aligned with neither the Crewmates nor the Impostors. The Jester wins if they get ejected by the crew, so Jester players have to act as suspicious as possible without overselling themselves. It's far from a practical addition to the game, but it adds an element of chaos to the game that's sure to result in a lot of laughs.
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There's plenty of other mods that completely defy the traditional boundaries of Among Us. For instance, a proximity chat mod gained a ton of popularity when it emerged. Instead of keeping players silent outside of meetings, players could talk to each other if they were near one another. Sparse, distrustful interactions mid-game or pre-murder conversations make for plenty of memorable moments, and another mod adds a zombie game mode to Among Us. This challenging option saw every Crewmate slowly get turned into zombies as they race to complete their tasks before everyone is infected.
Although strictly speaking it isn't a mod for Among Us, there is one more Among Us themed mod worth mentioning. Some Among Us fans modded the Crewmate into Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Since the odds of Among Us getting invited to Smash are astronomically low, such a mod turns the impossible into reality. The sheer diversity of mods for Among Us shows how dedicated the fanbase is. Innersloth might be taking its time to update the game, but in the meantime, the fan base is providing plenty of ways to keep the game feeling fresh. Considering how new some of these mods are, there's bound to be a lot more of them in the future.
Among Us is available now on mobile, PC, and Switch with Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S versions in development.