Among Us is, hands down, one of the best party games you can play if you have no fun activities planned for a jolly evening with your friends. It can be just as fun if you start a match alongside several other people or alone, with a full lobby of online players. Knowing how to play makes the entire experience much more enjoyable, so feel free to visit our beginner’s guide for a complete run-down of the game mechanics. There, you can find out more information about what everyone’s goal is, as well as a bonus section regarding game design theory. Learn more about how to optimize your Among Us experience on PC.

In this article, we’d like to focus on what it means to be an Impostor in Among Us and what you can do to be successful even when matched against the most observant and inquisitive of players. Before anything else, though, you should try to understand the minds of your opponents, the Crew. This insight will give you an advantage whenever discussions take place or somebody tries to raise suspicion concerning your behavior.

The Impostor’s Role in Among Us

Although being a Crewmate is certainly awesome, especially when you can find a group of people who are willing to cooperate, the Impostor role is, by far, the most exhilarating one. Think of it as the game’s version of a Joker character – a wildcard or loose cannon whom nobody can control and everyone has to stay away from. Unfortunately, your odds of landing in this position are quite small (25% in a match of 4 players or, more likely, 10% in a lobby of 10). In case you don’t get to be an Impostor, though, don’t be a downer by leaving the lobby.

Your odds might be improved depending on the host’s settings, since you can have up to 3 Impostors in one game. Now that’s chaos. To get the most fun out of Impostoring, you should take care to play it very carefully. Your overarching goal is to kill all Crew members before they get to complete the list of available tasks without getting voted out. You won’t be able to complete any tasks yourself, but you will be given a general list of assignments you might want to fake so as to earn everybody else’s trust.

Be wary, though, because not all tasks will be available for the Crew, so you might actually want to lay back and be observant for a little while. Many inexperienced Impostors try to scan their cards into the Admin station without first making sure that the task is actually available. If you play with attentive players, they’ll call an emergency meeting and oust you faster than you can blink.

You have two abilities as an Impostor, Sabotage and Kill, and we can’t seem to decide which is more fun. We’ll stick with the Kill, for now. No, Sabotage. No, no. Kill. The latter gives you the possibility to slay a Crewmate when you’re within range (distance can be short, medium, or long, depending on the host’s settings). Usually, there’s a 10 second cooldown. This can, however, be increased by the host to a full minute, should they desire a more slow-paced game.

Sabotage, on the other hand, creates a temporary problem somewhere on the ship. Depending on what it is, Crewmates might have to just wait it out, go there fix it, or ignore what’s going on. You can also lock them up in various rooms for a limited amount of time by closing the doors. Lastly, Impostors can crawl through vents which are inaccessible to Crew. You can use these to either hide after a kill or move around the map with great ease. The time you spend here doesn’t count towards the CD of your Sabotage or Kill, though.

The Impostor’s Guide to Smooth Criminality

Here are some of our pro tips you can use to become a smooth criminal every time you are put in the deliciously nasty position of killing all Crewmembers:

Calm and Confidence

You can come up with a series of excuses when someone tries to point the finger at you for trying to fake complete a task. So long as it’s game related, you have a good chance of convincing the group. For example, when someone accuses you of fake asteroid killing, you can say that the system was sabotaged and the guns must have been jammed.

If you’re caught next to a vent, you can claim that you noticed some fishy movements around there and were trying to check it for Impostors. Similarly, if somebody suspects you for closing doors, you can say that you were trying to prevent them for closing and that “Crewmember X” actually closed them.

Don’t Jump the Gun

Believe it or not, you can get people in trouble for saying the truth if they’re not careful enough to augment their statements with sound proof. For instance, if someone says they saw you going into a vent, you can easily turn it around and claim they’re trying to divert attention from themselves.

As a general rule, players tend to see those who jump the gun with increased skepticism. When debating for yourself during a discussion, try to seem laid-back. You also get bonus points if you can convince the group that an emergency meeting was called for nothing – nobody hates fake emergencies more than Crewmates.

Don’t Give Yourself Away

Certain tasks have an animation when they are being completed by a Crew member. When someone is blasting meteors, you can actually see the guns firing. Similarly, the medical bay’s scan will have a green animation. Shield, as well as trash disposal assignments also have visual cues. If a group of people is formed, you want to go ahead and stick with them as much as possible, to avoid suspicion.

Take the Initiative

The best way to ensure victory as an Impostor in Among Us is to take the initiative. Don’t let Crewmates control the game by going around in big groups. Keep sabotaging different rooms on opposite sides of the ship and divide them as much as possible. When this is feasible, go with whoever is alone. When they reach a room that also has a vent, make sure that nobody is nearby and make your move. Then, scurry off to the vent and go into a different room.

We haven’t had this much fun with a mobile game in a long time, which is also part of the reason why we’ve spent way more evenings on it than we probably should have. Or not. Who’s to say that we won’t someday benefit from these social skills in real life? What if our application to Survivor is finally picked up and Jeff Probst calls us on a million-dollar adventure? We have to be prepared. Always.

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