Among Us 2, the planned sequel to the online hit game Among Us will be canceled as the game developers will be focusing on the original game.
InnerSloth, the game studio behind the massive craze - crossing over a million users by September, with as much as 3.5 million concurrent users - have made the announcement Thursday. They explained: "the main reason we are shooting for a sequel is that the codebase of Among Us 1 is so outdated," adding that it was not intended to support a lot of new content.
"However, seeing how many people are enjoying Among Us 1 really makes us want to be able to support the game and take it to the next level," the developers wrote. "We have decided to cancel Among Us 2 and instead put all our focus into improving Among Us 1."
Among Us: 2020's Sleeper Hit for Video Games
Among Us is an online game based similar to social deduction games like Mafia or Killer Killer. In the game, 4 to 10 players can join and be assigned as either a "Crewmate" or an "Impostor." Crewmates are assigned with accomplishing a number of "tasks," as well as identifying who the Impostors are. On the other hand, Impostors pretend to be a crewmate, sabotaging parts of the stage and killing off crewmates.
It was developed by InnerSloth, a three-man team composed of a programmer, a game designer, and an artist, first released for Android and iOS in June 2018. By August, it saw the release of a PC version.
While it saw a relatively small player base, the global coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent stay-at-home orders have led to the rediscovery of the game. During the lockdown, the game became an unexpected hit, mostly because of Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook game streamers bringing the game to their respective followers.
According to the user volume charts from Steam, Among Us saw an average player increase from 117.6 in January 2020 to 126,611.6 this September.
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Over 1 million people are playing Among Us right this moment. That's insane. Thank you all so much. — Forest (@forte_bass) September 4, 2020
All Sequel Plans Going to Among Us
Some of the changes in the video game will include working on improving their servers. Owing to the drastic increase in its player base, Among Us now has three servers where it previously only had one. Players can now choose from Asia, Europe, and North America servers.
Developers are also planning to provide additional "colorblind support," describing the planned improvement as "something we've put off for way too long." InnerSloth plans to add more identifiers both for its characters - the instantly-recognizable miniature astronauts - and its color-based "tasks" or in-game missions, like connecting color-coded wires.
The largest development announced so far is the creation of an account system. Among Us has remained publicly open and anonymous, with friends inviting each other through creating game rooms each with its own game code. Rooms can be set into private, which only allows those with the code to enter, or public and allow anyone to join.
"We have LOTS of other things planned too, we just need to prioritize and organize all our plans. Stay tuned!"
Watch the gameplay and design for Among Us in the Steam Release Trailer below:
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