Hello, Crewmates!

Welcome to a special blog post I’m calling “Behind the Beans.” We wanted to give you a peek behind the scenes (or beans in this case), and talk about some of the design decisions that make Among Us what it is currently!

Thankfully, we have our amazing principal game designer, Dave, to walk us through how the team took on some new challenges in developing our newest roles: the Detective and Viper!

I hope you have your magnifying glasses polished and a fresh notebook: today, Dave will showcase what it took to bring the Detective role from a cool concept into a bean-ality.

Take it away, Dave!

Dors

Detective

When I think about a detective, I picture someone who gathers clues, puts evidence together, and solves crimes. This is exactly what the Detective Crewmate does! With the Notes and Interrogate abilities, they can write down important info, gather clues from other Crewmates, and put it all together to solve murders.

The Detective is one of the most complex roles the team has ever worked on. A big part of its complexity comes from the Notes ability. It’s a core component for the Detective that holds a lot of important information and can be the deciding factor on whether the Crewmates win or lose.

Considering all of this, it should be no surprise that the Notes ability underwent many, many iterations. So for this blog post, I want to take you through a few of the iterations and highlight why changes were made and some of the difficulties we encountered – one issue was so scary we almost delayed the role entirely!

The Early Days

The early version of a role is always very barebones: grey blocking, reusing assets, and doing the absolute minimum to get the point of the role across. For the role prototypes, the goal is to “find the fun” as fast as possible. This means hacking together the required parts of a role so that we can playtest it ASAP.

 One of the first versions of the Detective had a Suspect List which was created if you found the body and used the Inspect ability on it. Of course, if someone else were to walk in at this moment, they will see you standing over the body and can only assume one thing…

 With the Suspect List, the Detective automatically got a list of other players, one of which is guaranteed to be the killer. Through playtesting, we found out pretty quickly that there were a couple of pain points with this version:

• First, the role completely relied on finding a dead body. It’s pretty common to go a whole game never finding a dead body. If a player was a Detective and never found one, they never got to use their ability. This was a huge bummer!
• The second issue was that the Suspect List was too powerful because the killer was guaranteed to be in it. Through discussion, the list would be quickly narrowed down and the Impostor outed. We tried a variation where the number of suspects in the list was dependent on the number of players left in the match but that got way too complicated way too quickly.

With these two major issues, it was important to make some changes and try a new version of the role.

More Player Agency

For the next iteration of the Detective, I wanted to give the player more agency through information collecting. True to the fantasy of being a Detective, they should be able to gather clues around the map.

To alleviate the dependence on a Detective finding a body, we created “crime scenes” that replaced a dead body after the next Emergency Meeting. So, if Lime is the Detective, but Pink found the body, Pink will say that it was in Electrical and Lime can go there after the meeting to see the crime scene. The Detective will be able to Inspect the crime scene to get the Suspect List for that murder.

Speaking of the Suspect List – that also got a big change this iteration. Instead of giving the Detective a list of actual Crewmates, they have to build their own list based on information brought up in meetings. The Detective could build their own Suspect List by investigating other Crewmates around the map to learn their location at the time of the murder.

 Playtests for this version went a lot better! The Detective’s ability was actually being used and crimes were being solved. Matches were more evenly balanced now that Impostors weren’t guaranteed to be on a Suspect List. But with this iteration, a new (and big) issue emerged. The Inspect ability got overloaded with how much it could do. It made it difficult to teach and play the role. Running around to inspect crime scenes and inspect other Crewmates was far too much for one role.

This wasn’t an issue that could be easily solved with a minor adjustment. A big change was needed that still maintained the fantasy of playing a detective but in a way that didn’t overcomplicate the role. On to the next iteration!

Almost There

The first step towards simplifying the role was in the crime scenes. Instead of having to go to each one, the Suspect List had a section to manually add where it happened. This change is what made the Suspect List turn into the more generalized Notes ability. Along with simplifying the role a lot, I was happy with this change because it fulfilled a lot of other ideas:

• It encouraged more discussion in meetings because now the Detective is very dependent on the person who reported the body to state where they found it
• It maintained the fantasy of being a Detective by filling in the info they learn into their notes
• It allowed counter play by an Impostor. If the Impostor self-reported and lied about the location, the Detective has a much harder time trying to solve that murder

Because “Inspect” wasn’t for dead bodies or crime scenes anymore, it was renamed to “Interrogate” to better fit the detective fantasy of interrogating other Crewmates and learn their whereabouts.

This version of the Detective playtested really well, and is ultimately what we ended up releasing. However, in classic game dev fashion, there was one more big issue that came up that almost caused us to put the role on hold completely. Internally, we started to refer to this issue as The Hallway Problem.

The Hallway Problem

The Hallway Problem exists because maps are made up of lots of hallways. Maybe not so much Polus and The Fungle, but this was even worse because they both have huge outside areas. Basically, the Hallway Problem is the issue that the Detective’s abilities are greatly nerfed if the Impostor kills outside of a room. Because the Notes and Interrogate abilities revolved around room names, kills outside of rooms made it nearly impossible for the Detective to solve those murders.

Using The Skeld as an example: if a dead body was found in a hallway and a Crewmate who was interrogated was in “Hallway” at the time of a kill, that could mean the Crewmate was next to the body or it could mean that they were on the other side of the ship! This doesn’t help the Detective at all.

The team explored tons of different solutions, some involving pathfinding, some raycasts. Each solution had their strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately we were all in agreement about setting up “Near Zones”. This simply meant manually defining areas on each map as “Near” a room. Therefore, a Detective wouldn’t get “Hallway” in their Notes anymore but instead “Near Reactor” or “Near Storage”. This at least gave the Detective a clue they could still work with.

What started as a scary problem ended up being solved by a pretty simple and straightforward solution. I’m really proud of how the team put their heads together to tackle this issue. 

Final Touches

With “The Hallway Problem” solved, the team was able to confidently move forward with getting the role ready for release. Along the way we were able to further polish the role by doing things like adding an Impostor type selection to the Notes and making the Notes icon change based on the active case.

With two abilities, the Detective easily has one of the highest skill floors and skill ceilings out of all the roles we’ve created. Building a case takes a long time, and if you’re able to finally put one together, it’s then about convincing your allies that you can be trusted. Don’t forget, this puts a big target on your back as Impostors look to take you out before you solve a case – it’s truly a high stakes, high rewards type of role!

It was a real journey iterating on the Detective to get to where it’s at now. I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out Jade (woooo, thanks Jade!) who took on the bulk of the programming iterations on the Detective. As a team, we had a blast playing the role and I hope you have just as much fun as we did!

Q&A

Before we conclude this deep dive, take a look at our Q&A with Daniil from TikTok, and get answers to other burning questions about the Detective!

Off to cook up some more roles,

Dave

It’s new content time, Crewmates!!

Can you believe it?! Our new roles are finally here, and they’re sure to shake up your next Emergency Meeting! Update your game to 17.0.0 so you can enjoy these new flavors of chaos and all the fixes.

New Crewmate Role: Detective

Some of you are proper gumshoes, and now you can live up to the name by playing as the new Detective role! This is our first role with two separate abilities. Here’s how to use them:

• Notes: Keep track of a dead Crewmate’s location, your list of suspects, and what kind of Impostor you’re looking for.
• Interrogate: Start questioning your fellow Crewmates, and find out where they were during the crime!
  • You can only use the ability on one active case at a time! You’ll need to switch the file if you’re researching multiple murders.
  • You can change how many Interrogations a Detective can do via the advanced role settings when you’re in the Dropship.

When we made this role, we really wanted to make Emergency Meeting discussions even more fun!

Be careful, though! As you start putting the pieces together, you might be the Impostor’s next target. Make sure to grab a fresh notebook and your magnifying glass — you’re gonna need ’em!

New Impostor Role: Viper

This new Impostor role is perfect for destroying, or in this case, dissolving their victims. Use a well-timed Sabotage to keep the rest of the crew busy while you use your Acid ability and watch the Crewmate’s body slowly melt away. Here’s how it works:

• After a kill, the Crewmate corpse will decay in 3 stages: slightly dissolved, very dissolved, and then just a bone before it’s completely gone.
• You can adjust how quickly the corpse dissolves in the advanced role settings in the Dropship.

Before long, the body is gone, and all you have to worry about is your alibi. Time it right and you might achieve the ultimate Impostor dream: killing without leaving any trace of it behind. No one’s going to call an Emergency Meeting when there’s nothing, right?

If you find yourself on the unfortunate end of the Viper’s acidic spit, sadly… this is your end. But at least you’ll be treated to a brand new kill animation before you watch your body start to sizzle.

We had a great time testing these roles and are excited to see how y’all handle these new abilities — whether you become The Skeld’s greatest detective or you just want to go around spitting at other Crewmates (a lil gross, ngl), it’s sure to be a ton of fun.

Alongside the new roles, we have some quality of life updates!

First up is our “How to Play” guide. The guide was getting a little cramped with our last additions. Now that we’ve got 9 roles, the guide has been updated so you can more easily select which one you’d like to learn to play.

The Role Settings have also been updated! We couldn’t squeeze all the new roles into the same space, so we changed the selection into a scrollable list. The roles will be ordered left to right, starting with the older roles on the left and the newer roles to the right.

Practice mode got a little lift as well! Now, when you’re looking to change your role during Practice, you can choose either the new blue Crewmate folder or the red Impostor folder to find and select the role you’d like to try.

Keep reading for a few fixes we have with this update too.

Patch Notes

• [MIRA HQ] [The Airship] [The Fungle] – You now have to enter the whole code for the Enter ID Code task. No more easy codes.
• When another player has your preferred Crewmate color, you will see your currently assigned color when looking in your inventory.
• The “Up All Night Raving” hats are now sorted correctly in the wardrobe.
• You can no longer identify dead Crewmates by viewing them in the “Crewmates” window during a match.

If you happen to spy any strange bugs or glitches in your pursuit of the Impostors, remember to send us a ticket at our helpdesk.

I’m going to pass it over to Mike to cover some known bugs with this release!

New roles? New buttons? MENUS?! You know what that means…

Bugs. Here’s a list of some we already know about:

• [Switch/PC] – Controller button prompts do not appear when opening the Detective Notes with mouse or touch controls then switching to controller
• [PC] [Detective] – Location map markers do not scale when changing resolution
• [Android] [Practice] [Fungle] – Users rarely receive a black screen when loading into Fungle on Practice
• [PC] [Detective] – Detective Notes window can be opened behind the ejection screen if the Role Ability key bind is pressed rapidly during an Emergency Meeting
• [Detective] – Upper and Lower Decontamination are causing a minor overlap in the Location Note field
• [Detective] – Changing the Killer Note does not play the Pencil SFX
• [Detective] – Memory Leak takes place when switching between the ‘Killed Player’ tabs
• [PC] [Detective] – Changing resolution results in the Interrogate button disappearing
• [Polus/Airship] [Detective] – Several room names are not displayed when selecting a murder location on the Map
• [PC/Mobile] – Missing visual indications for tabs navigation when using keyboard/mouse or Mobile input in the lobby under certain conditions
• [Mobile] [Viper] – Clients on mobile platforms can report an already dissolved body upon resuming the game which results in getting kicked for hacking
• [Viper] – Noisemaker’s alert does not disappear once their body is fully dissolved
• [Practice] [The Fungle] [Detective] – Certain dummies are incorrectly labelled as in the Meeting Room when Interrogated
• [Friends List] – Adding a new friend to your list will display your name instead of theirs

That’s right, with big, shiny new updates means the chance for stuff to go wrong. We know, we know, we don’t like it either, but welcome to making video games! If you run into an issue, make sure you reach out to us as soon as you can. Take screenshots, record video, and send us as much information as you can, AND MAKE IT SPECIFIC.

Also! Some players have been having trouble receiving the parent portal emails to set their account permissions. We’re still working on it! Recent changes have helped some players correctly get their emails, so if you haven’t tried lately please try again. For anyone still having issues, the Crewmates are hard at work on those tasks and will get it sorted before you know it. Thanks for your patience!

Congratulations! You made it through the blog. Your reward is gazing upon some awesome creations from the community.

First up is a piece from our official Discord, by Dogchy. They said they started drawing again, and getting back into art is always worth celebrating. Their Crewmate seems pretty happy about it, too. Great job, Dogchy!

This next piece by Fishy is celebrating our collab with Pusheen! I laughed immediately when I saw this in our server’s art channel. I’d love to have some of these on my desk, even if my own space cats would probably knock them down.

Our next artist, AQ, really captured how some Emergency Meetings go. I have a bad feeling about what’s gonna happen to Lime…

Our 4th entry for the community art is a blast from the past! Mrchesse333 from Reddit attempted a physical build of Polus back in 2020. Sadly, it never saw completion but I still think it’s pretty rad to try and make the map irl.

That’s all on another wonderful round of art! Remember to tag us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, and TikTok when you share your creations so we can see what y’all are creating. Maybe there’s some fun Detective and Viper art in our future

Worried about that sizzling sound,

Dors

EHE, TE NANDAYO???!!? 

This collaboration is no laughing matter, Crewmates! To celebrate their Version Luna I launch, we’ve teamed up with Genshin Impact to bring a Paimon look to Among Us. 

One of the Crewmates has been obsessed with playing Genshin Impact between tasks, so we had the pleasure of working with HoYoverse to cook up these cosmetics and satisfy your Paimon-ial needs FOR FREE!  

Just log in to Among Us from now until October 10^th 2025, 17:00 UTC (October 10^th at 10am PT/1pm ET) to receive: 

• Paimon Wig 
• Paimon Costume 
• Crest of the Best Travel Companion Nameplate 

They’ll be available directly in your inventory! Make sure you tell your friends (or enemies?) to get in on this too before they disappear forever. 

With this new fit, you’ll be the cutest cosplayer at your Emergency Meetings. Just be careful around hungry Impostors or you’ll wind up as emergency food.  

Be sure to check out this dream team collab and more details on Genshin Impact’s Version Luna I launch here. 

Off to explore the area ahead of us, 

Sofi-mon

Greetings, Crewmates!

Just because the Vigilante Role is here to stay permanently doesn’t mean we can’t do a cheeky little recap on the DUM Justice Limited Time Event! We LOVE to share data and insights with you.

Let’s start with some gameplay stats…

The Vigilante Role grants a Crewmate the ability to Kill other beans — be it the Impostor or fellow Crewmates. However, it seems a majority of Vigilantes didn’t go on a justice-fueled rampage. 💢 Of all the deaths during the Limited Time Event, 63.46% were done by Impostors and only 36.54% were performed by Vigilantes! ⚖️

Whether brought on by evil or well-intentioned justice, the number of unalivings during the DUM Justice event went wild! ☠️ Over one million beans were killed! That’s a lot of bones! 🦴

45% of these kills happened in lobbies where only one death occurred. So, that’s either some really great deductive work 🔎… or speaks highly of Vigilante precision! 🔭 Alternatively, only 23 matches during the entire event period saw nine bean deaths in the same match. 🤯 Now THAT’s stealth skill!

Looking at color preference, it’s not too shocking that 🔴 Red remains the most used Bean. We’ve seen this since essentially the beginning of time.

And yet… look how close ⚫ Gray is on taking the lead! Could it be possible for a color popularity upset after the Critical Cargo event?! 😱 We’ll have to find out.

Obligatory #JusticeForBrown as well. 🤎 We’re rooting for you.

On the note of popularity, we’re seeing some pretty expected results for the most used cosmetics as well:

• Red bean ❤️
• Fedorable Hat 🎩
• Git Gud Gloves 🕹️
• Suited Up Skin 👔

Clearly the majority of our Crewmate player-base are distinguished, dignified, and fashionable gamers. Who would’ve guessed?

Keeping on topic, all five of the Vigilante-themed cosmetics performed fairly well. Most notably, the Caped Crewsader skin was the SECOND most used during the event, only losing out to the Suited Up skin. It’s giving 💵 billionaire philanthropist secret identity by day… Vigilante hero by night vibes. Right? 🦇

Rank 32 and Rank 44, for the Vigilante Mask: Year One and Vigilante Hood hats respectively, may not seem too popular… but consider this: if you exclude all of the free hat options, they instead come in at Rank 2 and Rank 11! Curious what the most popular hat would be instead? It’s the Plagued mask! ☣️

We can’t wait to see how these stats will change when we scan-alyze the Critical Cargo Limited Time Event! 📦Especially with all of the exciting ✨ Weekly Cosmetic Drops ✨ planned throughout the event — new items drop every Thursday!

Stay suspicious, Crewmates!

Hello, Crewmates!

As of today, we will no longer be supporting any 2023 versions of Among Us. If you see “v2023” on the bottom left of the main menu, you will be affected. Please update your game to 16.1.0 as soon as possible so you can keep betraying your friends playing!

We plan to keep expanding Among Us with features, roles, bug updates, improved security, etc. and getting Crewmates on similar versions helps with that development.

Thanks for understanding and sticking with us no matter which version you’ve been playing on.

Innersloth