Hi, friends! I’m deep into the preparation for Hallowed Hill’s release on Oct 1, and so I’m also operating with more stress and anxiety than normal. Yay! Life is fun.
I don’t know if you remember, but in the depths of lockdown (late 2020/early 2021) I was playing a lot of Among Us. I mean, a LOT of Among Us. I joined a Discord server specifically for that, where we played for hours a day, and I even did a few tournaments (and placed).
At the end of March, Among Us released the long awaited Airship map, and–the whole thing fell apart. As lockdown restrictions lessened, everyone went back to work or school or wherever, and no one was available to play anymore. No one wanted to play anymore. We’d burned out.
My server stayed together–we still hang out and chat–but we didn’t really play AU anymore, aside from every now and again, or the odd round of Vent Tag.
Now, about a month ago, two of the mods on said server started organizing AU games again. Regularly.
Turns out they’d accidentally found another server where people WERE still playing on a regular basis (and weren’t jerks–I had to leave one AU server because of that). Those of us that were interested got invited over, and now I’m playing AU again, on a regular-ish basis, eighteen months after I more or less stopped.
It’s not the same game. Oh no. The bigger lobbies actually make lying way easier, because there’s so much chaos going on. Sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all, and just fly under the radar. There’s built-in roles now, four of them: scientist, engineer, shapeshifter, and guardian angel.
(I hate engineer because now if you see someone venting it means nothing. Augh.)
It’s not so much social deduction anymore. Just chaos, in a lot of cases, in which case it’s best to play with friends.
On top of that, there’s a new mod out, Town of Host, which only requires the host to have the mod as opposed to everything. The mod adds a ton of roles, half of which are neither crew nor imposters, which again completely changes the game because you can never be sure what side someone is on.
Do I miss the old game? Yeah, sometimes. There’s not as much skill required anymore. I played a game last week where I was imposter and I kept doing the absolute worst kills and not getting caught. I miss the challenge. I miss the strategies, and the high you got when you were the last imp standing in the last three and you managed to convince the crew to vote wrong.
But it is nice to be playing with friends again, and it is nice to be letting off some steam that way. And it’s way less stressful to be imposter when there’s not as much riding on it.
Anyway, that’s me. Now it’s back to marketing and emails and all that jazz.
Play AU, friends? Thoughts about it?