Behind the Beans: Tracker & Noisemaker

Hello, Crewmates!Once again, it’s time to go BEHIND THE BEANS! We hope you’ve enjoyed the last blogs we did for our newest roles: the Detective and Viper.

As a treat Dave has turned back the clock to take us through the process for some of our other roles – the Tracker and Noisemaker!

Take it away, Dave!

After releasing The Fungle in 2023, the next goal was to release a batch of new roles. Players had been asking for new roles for a while, so it was exciting to start prototyping different ones. Roles are a great way to create new mechanics, make the gameplay feel fresh, and add new twists to the social deduction component in Among Us.

This exploration resulted in 3 new roles being released in 2024: Tracker, Noisemaker, and Phantom. I felt that the Tracker and the Noisemaker were interesting because despite both being Crewmate roles, they’re design opposites. This allowed them to have stronger, unique identities while also serving two different playstyles.

Noisemaker

The Noisemaker has a very straightforward ability: when they’re killed by the Impostor, they send out an alert to the other Crewmates, guiding them to their location. It’s a pretty simple role to play because it’s passive. It automatically triggers on death. It’s a great role for players who don’t want to have another thing to do during a match. Some people just want to focus on tasks and fixing sabotages — and that’s totally okay. Honestly, that’s me a lot of the time. 

Of course, there was concern about the Noisemaker being too simple. This was feedback the team got frequently: it could be a letdown to get assigned a role and not have an extra ability you can use at the press of a button. But, simplicity is the name of the Noisemaker’s game. It’s not to say there isn’t any nuance to the role. A clever Noisemaker can lure the suspected Impostor to kill them in a spot that gives them away. I’ve been tricked like this a few times myself while I’ve been Impostor.

The simplicity of the role doesn’t mean it’s a weak role either. It’s actually quite powerful in that the alert is a game-wide effect. It can be the deciding factor that throws off an Impostor and gets the Crewmates the win! Releasing a low complexity role was the design intent behind the Noisemaker, so I decided to keep them straightforward and simple.

After it was released, seeing the Noisemaker so positively received really warmed my heart. From casual players to streamers, everyone understood the role and valued how game-changing the Noisemaker’s ability can be. One my favorite comments to this day is still:

Tracker

Like I mentioned earlier, the Tracker is the mechanical opposite of the Noisemaker. The Tracker has the ability to place a tracking device on another Crewmate. By opening their map, they can then see where the other Crewmate is while they move around. They were designed for the super Crewmates who, on top of doing their tasks and fixing sabotages, are constantly figuring out who’s safe and who’s suspicious.

Of course, this ability is powerful. For new players, the ability was designed to be straightforward to use and understand. But as players start to get better with the role, it gives gameplay depth and surprise.

On a surface level, the ability allows the Tracker to confirm another Crewmate’s location. The ability becomes more valuable once you start combining it with other information people share in Emergency Meetings. Very clever Trackers even use the ability to catch a venting Impostor, a disguised Shapeshifter, or an invisible Phantom! 

It was really great to see the Tracker being highly praised and valued as well. There was a lot of depth added to the design of the Tracker and players were quick to find it and appreciate it. 

Learnings

From these two roles, I was able to confirm a couple of important ideas:

1. Players appreciate roles with low skill floors. The Noisemaker’s skill floor is very low and it was well received. Therefore, it wouldn’t be farfetched to release other roles around this skill level.
2. Players also appreciate roles with high skill floors. I was concerned that the Tracker was overdesigned or overcomplicated, so it was nice to see that players were able to fully grasp the role and all its nuances.

The release of roles in 2024 was so amazing. The outpour of excitement from the players was really motivating for the team, who worked so hard on it for so many months. We’re using this positivity to continue creating more and more great stuff. This means I’ll probably be back for some more blogs, so keep a lookout for the next Behind the Beans!

Off to make more noise,

Dave