There’s nothing quite like lying to your friends.
Getting the people who know you best to believe something that is entirely untrue is a surprisingly
entertaining challenge.
To be clear, I’m not an advocate for dishonesty, at least not in normal circumstances, and
that’s why I love hidden role games or as a friend of mine calls them: “trust-likes.”
I’ve dropped countless hours in titles like Secret Hitler, Avalon, and my most recent
obsession, Among Us.
While each of these games have plenty of differences, all of them center around asymmetrical gameplay
where some players are assigned to complete a task and the rest have to disrupt that task.
What I love about these kinds of games is that they give me the chance to do something
I would never feel comfortable doing in my real life: lie unmercilessly to people I care
about.
The games ask players to take all the trust and goodwill they’ve built with other people,
and use it against them.
Playing them is brutal, hilarious, and endlessly fascinating.
From a gameplay perspective, hidden role games provide a challenge that you can’t really
get anywhere else.
With a lot of titles that have asymmetrical gameplay, players can dedicate freely to the
role that they’re assigned, but that isn’t really the case for hidden role games.
To be successful at both roles, players need to maintain a delicate balance where they
aren’t too obviously one role or the other throughout every play session.
So with Among Us, players are assigned one of two roles: crew or impostor.
The crew’s objective is to fix up the ship and try to figure out who the impostors are
so that they can vote them out, and the impostor’s is to sabotage everything and kill the crew.
The two roles call for players to act in dramatically different ways, but if other players notice
this difference, it becomes very obvious who the impostor is, and this is where the real
challenge kicks in: finding a consistent approach that works when playing both as a crew member
and an impostor.
It is hard to find that sweet spot, and there isn’t an objectively perfect approach; it
changes depending on the player and who they’re playing with.
Some people can get away with stuff that others can’t just based on their personality, and
a group made up of mostly loud and chaotic types will need an entirely different approach
than one primarily filled with reserved and analytical players.
What’s important though is finding a consistent way to play in any given session and sticking
with it.
The focus is more about winning the night than individual games.
Throughout my years of playing various trust-likes, I’ve experimented a fair bit to find the
approach that nets me the most wins.
I’ve been the analytical player who lays out all of the information with the appearance
of neutrality so that when I am the bad guy, I can subtly manipulate facts to best work
for me; I’ve been the source of chaos who sows confusion amongst the ranks regardless
of my role so that when I do something suspicious, people won’t be sure if I’m evil or just
stupid.
What I’ve found to work best though is to play in a way where people are always a little
bit suspicious of me but not so much so where I make things too confusing.
So in Among Us, I’ll make sudden movements towards other players to make them think I
might be contemplating killing them, and I won’t do tasks that could clear me in front
of other people so that I have plausible deniability when I can’t do it as an impostor.
This makes it so when I play in a way that doesn't align with what a perfect crew member
would do, I can throw out the defense, “well, I always play this way.”
It tends not to work so much in early games, but after playing with the same group for
a long period of time, it becomes a stronger and stronger defense.
Of course, while being consistent is important, adapting one’s approach as time goes on
is as well.
Like for a while, I regularly responded to accusations against me with some variation
of the phrase “why me?” and when I did that, people only became more suspicious of
me, even when I wasn’t the impostor.
So, despite it being something I was consistent with, it made me too suspicious.
Now I respond in a different way that doesn’t get me thrown out the airlock as much.
Keyword as much, I still get thrown out a lot.
An important part of the game is learning how to not get caught in the sights of someone’s
gut feeling, because while there are ways to gather concrete information in Among Us
and other hidden role games, for the most part, everyone is operating on assumptions,
and if they find anything that looks like information, they’ll grasp for it.
This makes it very important to not only learn how to manage one’s own assumptions but
also those of other people.
And this is when the simple concept of deceiving friends starts to devolve into an episode
Death Note.
When playing, I am constantly trying to break down the actions of every other player to
gather some bit of information to take and run with.
It’s a constant loop of considering what any given player is capable of, what other
players think that player is capable of, and what other players think I am capable of.
Hell, even right now, in just making this video, I feel like I’m still playing the
game by putting certain information out there so once the people I play with see this, I
can try to use the new assumptions they’ve made about me to my advantage.
I’m in too deep.
All of those reasons are why I don’t really like playing with strangers.
I find having some sort of existing connection with the other people in a match adds a ton
of interesting layers that I really enjoy engaging with.
It’s fascinating to play with people I know and trust, because I get to learn how they
act both when they tell the truth and when they lie.
And it's the latter that really is entertaining to watch.
Some do it in a cool and collected way, not missing a single step or having the slightest
waver in their voice.
Others approach it with a rising anger, making it hard for anyone else to get in a word so
they have no choice but to think that doing anything other than what is being yelled at
them means they are literally throwing the game right now.
There aren’t many circumstances where people get to lie to friends and walk away laughing,
and that’s what these games provide: a place to indulge in uncouth behavior without the
risk of any real repercussions.
The thing that intrigues me most specifically about Among Us is that I am worse at it than
any other hidden role game I’ve ever played.
There are so many more moving pieces to it than the titles that first got me into the
genre, and I still don’t know how to balance everything to be the best crewmember and impostor
possible, but I really want to.
And this brings up a somewhat uncomfortable question: should I want to be good at games
centered around lying?
And the answer is...noooo?
Look, yeah, becoming an accomplished liar is not a great look and anyone who walks away
from these games with the thought, “oh, it is so easy to get away with lying to my
friends” should rethink some things, but also I like to win stuff.
It feels really good when I make the right read on someone, and even better when I trick
a person into believing a lie.
With that said, these games do run the risk of friends actually getting mad at eachother.
In my experience what typically happens with trust-likes is that a group plays together
a ton, develops a meta that everyone begins to follow which eventually starts to suck
the fun out of things by making what should be a chaotic experience into a more formulaic
one.
And when it hits that stage, it's not uncommon for people to start getting frustrated by
how individual rounds are played.
I don’t think Among Us is immune to this, and my group is still pretty new to Among
Us, so it is hard to know how long we will want to keep coming back, but I do think it
has the potential for a much longer lifespan than the other hidden role games I’ve played,
and that comes from its customization options.
Pretty much everything can be changed whether that be adjusting kill cooldowns for impostors,
shifting the amount of tasks the crew needs to do, or even hiding the roles of players
after they’ve been ejected.
Changing any of these options calls for wildly different playstyles and forces everyone to
rethink how to approach a match, and I haven’t really had that experience with any other
trust-like.
Sure, board games are technically customizable but something like the Resistance doesn’t
lend itself to the same amount of homebrewed modes as the option menu in Among Us does.
Whenever any sort of staleness does start happening with a group, the solution to that
is almost assuredly somewhere in the options, and I adore when players are allowed to customize
a game to fit their needs instead of having to change to meet the game’s needs.
With Among Us, I hope this will lead to a long stint of my friends and I being able
to lie to each other.
Obviously though, at some point we will move past Among Us, and most likely won’t play
any trust-likes for a good while.
Our faith in eachother will return from playing team games and the occasional friendly competition.
Until of course the next hidden role game comes out, and I find myself back in the exciting
position of not being able to trust my friends.
And with all this talk about things you can’t rely on, let’s talk about something you
can: the bassy rumble of Raycon earbuds.
Raycon, who is this video’s sponsor, makes high quality wireless earbuds that sound as
great as other premium brands but start at about half the price.
I don’t like the sound of silence, so I am pretty much always listening to something,
and using raycons have been great for that, especially on the go.
They’re comfortable, they sound good, and they don’t have any cords to worry about,
so they are really easy to just grab and go.
Their latest model, the everyday E25 earbuds are awesome.
They have 6 hours of playtime, seamless bluetooth pairing, tons of bass, a more compact design
that gives a nice, noise-isolating fit, and they also come in new, fun colors.
And if you click the link in the description, you can get 15% off your order.
Raycon makes great earbuds, so if you’re in the market for a really solid pair, you
should check them out.
Anyway, thanks again to Raycon for sponsoring this video.
I appreciate you so much for watching.
If you like AMong Us, I do have some plans to stream it on Twitch, so follow me and you
can watch it maybe.
That's all I got.
I hope you have a great day and/or night, and I will see you in the next one.