Hello.
If you are reading this, you can no longer be saved. You can only save yourself.
Or perhaps… you’re the one who needs others to be saved from.
But perhaps it’s your first time. Perhaps you don’t have much experience.
This is a short guide with the need-to-know so you can ensure your own- or your crewmates’- or your partner’s- survival.
Welcome to the Short and Concise Guide to Playing Among Us.
Or at least, I’ll try to keep it that way.
But we’ll see.
Anyway.
There are two roles in Among Us: Crewmate and Impostor. Let’s go over your job as “Crewmate” first.
Crewmate
Okay, enough of the big, dramatic text. The Crewmate role is the one you will most likely be spending most of your time in, depending on the ratio of players to Impostors in a round (more on that later). A minimum of two and up to nine Crewmates can be alive in a round at any given time, provided there is at least one Impostor remaining in the game.
Your job as a Crewmate is, as a top priority, to finish a list of tasks assigned to you when a round begins. Your second priority, as your fellow crewmates fall to the hands of the Impostors, is to discover and eject all Impostors before too many people are killed, making it impossible to protect yourself from them.
Let’s talk about tasks. There are three different kinds: common, short, and long. Each is accompanied by a minigame which you will interact with via. Mouse (if playing on a computer) or by touch gestures (if playing on a mobile device). There are also crisis tasks (or simply “crises”) that are caused when Impostors sabotage the map, which must be completed to fix a variety of inconveniences or prevent game-ending scenarios. Otherwise, tasks can be completed in any order.
Common Tasks are tasks all crewmates are assigned at the beginning of the round. The top one or two (depending on ruleset) tasks in your list are the Common Tasks for the round. There are currently five Common Tasks in the game:
* Fix Wiring: Three sets of color-coded wires across the map need to be connected, starting from the left of each wire box and ending on the right.
* Swipe Card: In the Admin Room (or Office on Polus), an ID card in your wallet needs to be swiped at the correct speed through a reader- you can scan it too slow, too fast, and too messily. Replaced by Enter ID Code on Mira HQ.
* Enter ID Code (Only on Mira HQ): In the Admin room, An ID card in your wallet contains a five-digit code that needs to be entered correctly to verify your identity.
* Insert Keys (Only on Polus): In the Dropship where everyone initially spawns, the upper-right terminal has ten keyholes, and you will have one key. Insert and turn to complete.
* Scan Boarding Pass (Only on Polus): In the Office, the middle terminal can be used to scan a boarding pass by clicking on arrows and dragging the pass over the scanner.
Common Tasks are some of the most important tasks in the game, as they can be observed to quickly identify Impostors, particularly those with less experience. If you are a Crewmate with a given common task, and you see someone stand in range of a common task you don’t have, it is reasonable to assume they are faking the task and are potentially an Impostor. Assuming you don’t get killed, this is evidence you should bring to the meeting table at your next opportunity.
It should be noted that on the maps The Skeld and Mira HQ, there are only two possible common tasks. If the rules are set so there are two common tasks on these maps, it is not possible to identify Impostors with this method. Please note that the rules can be set so there are zero of any type of task as well.
Short and Long Tasks, meanwhile, are not as useful to identify Impostors, but some can be used instead to verify others as Crewmates (depending on the ruleset).
Short Tasks (up to five) are generally tasks that are finished with one interaction and take less than 10-20 seconds to complete (with some exceptions). Long Tasks (up to three) can require you to go from one terminal to another across the map, interact with a panel and wait a minute or longer before completing the final step, or simply take a while to finish and leave you vulnerable in the process. Identifying an Impostor faking either of these kinds of tasks requires familiarity with how long they take, but doing so is often not good for “hard accusations”- the kind you would bet your own life on. However, there is a subset of tasks called Visual Tasks which are accompanied by an animation (if the rules enable them) that can quickly confirm a player is, for sure, a Crewmate (OR Impostor, if the animation doesn’t play when it should).
* Clear Asteroids: On The Skeld, a player can be confirmed doing this task by observing the laser cannons on the right side of the ship in Weapons. On Polus, the laser cannons to the upper left of the Weapons room will fire instead. While this task exists on Mira HQ, it is not a Visual Task there.
* Empty Garbage / Empty Chute: Only on The Skeld, the second part of this task plays an animation of the garbage falling out of the airlock beyond the bottom of the Storage room.
* Submit Scan: Interacting with the scanner in the Medbay will cause the Crewmate to begin being scanned by a green field. No other Crewmate can do this at the same time, which can be used to identify other Crewmates if Visual Tasks are turned off in the rules.
Impostor
When you are an Impostor, your best friend is an alibi. Someone who will vouch for you if someone is found dead elsewhere. Someone who trusts you within the frame of a round, only for you to stab them in the back. Someone who suspects you, but begins to think otherwise if you hang around them too long. Whatever the method is, most of the time you will spend as an Impostor is gaining and spending trust. Up to three Impostors can be alive in a round at any given time, though the standard is one or two (as three is considered largely too difficult with the current max player size of 10). The chances you will be an Impostor (as opposed to a Crewmate) is evenly split amongst all available players in a simple formula: Impostors divided by Players.
* For example, if the rules are set so there are two Impostors and there are 10 players, each player has a 20% chance to be an Impostor.
* Alternatively, if the rules mandate one Impostor and there are six players, each player has a 17% chance to be the Impostor.
* It is worth noting that depending on the initial setup, the game will automatically limit the number of Impostors in a round if players drop too low.
* It is also worth noting that there is a known glitch that can occasionally occur where a single player can be selected consistently for the Impostor role. This can only be fixed by creating a new lobby.
You have one job as an Impostor: to kill most of the Crewmates so that the remaining can’t protect themselves. Impostors win the game under one of two conditions.
1. The number of remaining Crewmates falls equal to the number of remaining Impostors.
2. A crisis timer reaches zero.
When you are selected as an Impostor, you are given access to a set of tools to make your identity as discreet as possible: a list of possible tasks to fake, the ability to jump into and traverse through (or hide in) vents, the ability to sabotage the facility, and the ability to fix crises yourself. You cannot interact with tasks like Crewmates can, except for crises.
Oh, and you’re given the ability to kill. That’s important.
As an Impostor, you have a Kill Cooldown of anywhere between ten seconds and a full minute. This prevents you (and any partners) from simply going on a killing spree and quickly ending the round. The Kill Cooldown will pause if you have a task or tool open (such as a crisis, the Emergency Button, or any of the maps), and will also pause while you are traversing through vents. When you are ready to kill, simply pressing the kill button when in range of a crewmate will do the job, but you better have a plan for what to do next.
On top of killing, you can also sabotage the facility. When accessing the sabotage map, there are up to five types of sabotages, and each have their own perks.
* Doors: Forces doors to close in or around that area. On The Skeld, this closes them for a certain amount of time and will reopen once enough time passes. On Polus, the doors must be interacted with to reopen them.
* Lights: Mild crisis. Dims Crewmates’ vision and leaves Impostors’ unaffected. It’s common to strike when lights are out- just be careful not to get too close to anyone else, and make sure you don’t let it slip you have a larger field of vision if the body is found too soon. Players must interact with a breaker to turn the lights back on. It is possible to turn breakers back off once they’re on, even as a Crewmate.
* Communications: Mild crisis. Disables several features across a map and hides player tasks and task locations. An uncommon sabotage, most useful for guiding players away from dead bodies, or for preventing other players from pressing the Emergency Button. On The Skeld and Polus, a dial must be turned to clear the noise from a communications box. On Mira HQ, two authentication codes must be input on separate keypads with some synchronization instead.
* Reactor / Stabilizers: Major crisis. All players have a short amount of time to reach two panels, placed opposite of each other, and hold the panel down with a held click or touch (depending on game platform). You can see how many panels are being held down in the task list.
* Oxygen / O2: Major crisis. Two keypads need to have provided numbers input into them to prevent the station from running out of breathable air. Unlike Mira HQ’s Communications crisis, these numbers simply need to be in