The Among Us developers have announced that a planned sequel for the smash party-deception hit has been cancelled, with the planned features to be merged into the existing Among Us.
The meteoric rise of Among Us, like Fall Guys a month earlier, has been nothing but a thrill to see. The social deception game was first released in 2018, but it wasn’t until the game caught the eyes of Twitch streamers in South Korea and Brazil this year that it really started to gain steam. English-speaking streamers picked up the game afterwards, and before long, Among Us went from hundreds of active players to hundreds of thousands.
Having finally made it and then some, developers InnerSloth announced a sequel to Among Us in August of this year. But in a blog post early Thursday morning, the studio reversed that decision, saying they would take the more difficult step of diving into the Among Us code and reworking it to accommodate the features originally planned for Among Us 2.
Us devs have had several long discussions about what we want to do with the game. When do we stop working on Among Us 1? What content goes into Among Us 2? The main reason we are shooting for a sequel is because the codebase of Among Us 1 is so outdated and not built to support adding so much new content.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. We have decided to cancel Among Us 2 and instead put all our focus into improving Among Us 1. All of the content we had planned for Among Us 2 will instead go into Among Us 1. This is probably the more difficult choice because it means going deep into the core code of the game and reworking several parts of it. We have lots of things planned and we’re excited to bring new content to everyone as you continue to enjoy playing!
It’s a painful step to make — reworking old code often means months of sorting through painful technical debt, as the game likely wasn’t built from the ground up to have the kind of scability or scope that InnerSloth are probably now envisioning. But it’s a completely logical move given just how popular Among Us is right now. The game is second only to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2, making it not just one of the most popular games right now but also one of 2020’s most financially lucrative.
It’s a wonderful success story, although it’s also a reminder that there are also probably many, many very good indie games out there that just haven’t found their audience yet.
As for Among Us, here’s the features that the developers will aim to add in future updates:
- Server issues
- Colourblind options
- A proper friends/account system
- A new level
Among Us is available on Android and iOS for free, and the game is only $US5 on PC. Not a bad deal for one of the best experiences of the year, unless you keep getting shot all the time.
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