Our next major update is coming soon - actual release date to be announced - and while a huge chunk is secret, we did reveal new Roles would be part of it. As a little treat for being so patient, here’s a peek at what the new Impostor role will be. The rest of the roles will be for Crewmates only!
Introducing: THE SHAPESHIFTER.
The Shapeshifter can change their appearance and disguise themselves as other Crewmates. Do it well to frame other Crewmates and create confusion about who the real Impostor is. But watch out! The disguise doesn't last forever and leaves evidence behind.
Ability: This Impostor can pull up a menu of all other living Crewmates in the game and select one to copy their appearance (name, colour, and cosmetics). However the shapeshifting only lasts for a limited amount of time, unless altered in the lobby settings. Crewmates can see you midway through shapeshifting if they’re within line of sight, and the shift will leave evidence behind. During meetings, the Shapeshifter will appear as their original selves.
Adjustable gameplay options:
Probability: In the game lobby settings, you’ll be able to change the number and chance of an Impostor to have the Shapeshift ability.
Shapeshift Duration: How long an Impostor stays shifted after they change.
Leave Shapeshifting Evidence: Whether or not there is physical evidence of a shapeshift being left in a room after the Impostor morphs.
Our internal playtests have already become extremely chaotic from this change, and it’s a ton of fun trying to guess who’s who. Especially when you stumble upon two of the same Crewmate in one room! That’s it for this sneak peek!
There’s going to be a special event coming up VERY SOON with more information about release so please watch out for the news on our Twitter, Discord, or newsletter for when it’ll be happening.
Happy October and spooky season! I bet you’re wondering when the next update is.
WEEEELLLLLL.
We’re working on it? :D But no really, I know it’s been awhile since our last one with concrete information, so here’s a transparent-a-dev-log as possible to explain what’s been going on.
Server Issues
From Sept 20 as of today, you may have noticed our servers were a bit wonky, and you weren’t able to connect or create a game at many points during that time. This was due to a DDoS attack we were experiencing. Essentially, someone was spending a lot of money to send A LOT of traffic to our servers, which overwhelmed the datacenters. When a datacenter is overwhelmed the server maintainers close off the network for our servers and we have to take an outage. There are no privacy concerns or anything associated with this – the only problem is the fact people aren’t able to play the game when this happens.
When it comes to DDoS attacks, our options are limited, and honestly as much of a headache for us as it is for you. To counter it, we did get new hardware, shuffled some things around, and generally improved things, but these things take time to test and get approved, hence the delay in implementation. (And meanwhile, the DDoS continues for as long as the other person has money to throw at it, which is an expensive endeavour. Usually attackers just give up after an hour or two, but at peak, this was at a scale that took down Google servers some years ago!)
Everything should be up and running extremely soon, with future preventative measures! We weren’t sure if we should share this with you, but we wanted to be completely honest about the realities of game development, especially live games.
Roles and More?
But we’ve been pretty quiet about what we were exactly working on, haven’t we? Well – one thing I CAN tell you is our next *gameplay* update will be focused on implementing new roles. Which ones? That’s a secret. How many? Uh, also a secret. (More than 2.) (Maybe 3.) (Could be 4.) We also have another update planned around the same time, but I can’t say anything about that one yet.
The roles we’ve come up with may be slightly different that the ones you’ve seen around due to mods, because these are ones we’ve always wanted to implement into Among Us even before we released the game back in 2018. We just never had time for it. But thanks to the continued success of the game (thank you for playing!), it’s possible now. So we hope you enjoy what we come up with.
Crucially, because we want to make sure everyone can enjoy it, it’ll be an update coming to all our current platforms. And it’ll be free of course! As I’ve mentioned before, you mostly only see community mods available on PC due to the fact porting those things to other places like mobile and console are much more difficult (and in some cases impossible without being a developer.) We can’t wait for you to see what we’re doing with it! It’ll definitely add SO many layers and depth to the original game, and during our playtests we’ve already had a ton of fun testing it out.
And that's it for this update! I figured we can start calling our dev logs emergency meetings, so I roughly counted how many dev logs we had before and ended up with #32, hence the title of this once. No idea if it's accurate but this is what we're rolling with now! See you around the internets.
Oops I totally forgot to write a July dev log, sorry about that, please forgive. It’s been busy!
You’re probably wondering what we’re working on, and I can confidently tell you that it’s... still a secret. Heh.
To explain - we try not to announce things until they’re locked in and confirmed that they’re ready to release. (For instance, we can fail a check and have to go through an entire certification process again which is reviewed by people that need a minimum of X number of days to approve.)
Anyways, all that to say is our next big update is being worked on, and hopefully we can reveal that to you pretty soon. The team has been working SUPER hard. For now, here’s what I can talk about:
This is a sneak peek at some art from the update that I cropped and didn’t tell people I would post, shh. For your eyes only.
Actually as an apology for missing the other dev log, here’s another peek at something. Abstract, I know.
Summer merch drop: Our newest merch drop features 3 summer themed shirts, hoodies & tanks, 2 satin headscarves, transparent holo tote bag, our Dunkin Donuts Korea collab water bottles, acrylic stands, and more! Some of these things are limited edition so make sure you hop on it.
Retail Among Us drop: If you're in North America/Europe, you might've spotted that we have OFFICIAL Among Us products in stores now like Target, Hot Topic, Walmart, and more! Finally!!!! Whether it's 8" plushies, mystery capsules, or stamps, we're reallllly excited to have it out on shelves. If you pick any of our merch up, please tweet us or share it with us!!
Other small updates: Currently rebuilding our website so it looks nicer and we can conglomerate our dev logs there, PuffballsUnited finally went on his first vacation after 5 years, and we’ve hired on Hannako and Jake!
That's it for now, short and sweet. Bigger update as soon as I can give you it, I promise. The patience will be worth it, I hope!! We have SO MUCH planned - and not even just this next update. We're already planning for the big update after that!
Quick post to let you know about the changes in the latest patch for version 2021.6.30.
New additions:
Added vent cleaning task. Cleaning the vent will prevent any impostors from using that specific vent, but Impostors can still use other vents and the vent will be usable once it’s cleaned. If an Impostor is already camping out in a vent and then you start cleaning that vent, it'll boot them out with a dramatic sound and you'll see who it is. Surprise!
New languages. Traditional and Simplified Chinese and Irish localization added.
Bug fixes:
Getting stuck in place after a meeting is fixed. This was the biggest issue with the latest update, so run free now!! Be free beans!!
Scaling on "SHH" screen fixed. YES I read your comments on the SHH screen. The absolute hate that poor screen got, my goodness. I had to give it 3 tubs of ice cream to feel better. It's okay though, the world is aligned once again, the proportions have been fixed after it got weirdly borked.
Geoff eyepatch is now (sadly) back to being a mask. :(
Clouds in the Airship no longer move in the wrong direction. No more backwards progress! Onward!
Upload Data phone colors fixed. I have no clever caption for this.
All major buttons are now localized. Yeah I’m really running out of fun ways to make this content interesting.
Other minor visual and localization bug fixes. Our programming and QA team did a really great job please give them a psychic high five.
Ongoing bugs:
Wizard hat still missing. Still casting an invisibility spell. Working on finding it, sorry!
4:3 resolution still needs to be scaled. That’ll be addressed.
And quite a few others, but those are the biggest ones I'll list out.
And if you're a fan of grabbing physical editions of the game on console, pre-orders for it has just opened up!! (Release date for the game on Xbox and PlayStation has NOT been announced yet.) It comes with a ton of goodies with 3 different editions - Ejected, Crewmate, and Impostor! {LINK REMOVED}Check them out and pre-order here.
That’s it for now! Don’t forget the roadmap is the place to go if you’re interested in what we’re working on next, and check out our updated mod and fan creation policy if that’s something you were curious about.
On June 15th 2018, we released Among Us... as a local, mobile only game with just a few players. And now in 2021, not only is the game out on PC, Nintendo Switch, mobile and soon Xbox and PlayStation, but we also have this GIANT community of Crewmates and Impostors all over the world???
You really showed up!!
To celebrate, 15 player lobbies are OUT NOW, which includes things like:
An improved art style (subtle, but cleaner and easier for us to animate) - 4K BEAN GRAPHICS ARE THE FUTURE.
6 brand new colors: Tan, Gray, Banana, Rose, Maroon, and Coral -- I have seen absolute blood baths in the comments section of people claiming Rose and Banana for their mains. Be safe out there. The pastel stans are thirsty for their cute colours, and rightfully so. (Also I know these colours are not super colourblind friendly - we want to move away from colours being the main way people identify Crewmates, so hang tight!)
A new kill screen meeting menu that indicates who died between rounds -- Yeah that's right I know you don't keep track of who dies!! This is a call out to you Steve. (I don't know a Steve but whoever is named Steve must be really freaked out right now.)
Ability to honk horn added to The Airship 😀 If you have the “Stabilize Steering” task, bop the horn to honk it. Most important update in my humble opinion.
And various bug fixes:
The shop works in multiple languages again
Right Hand Man skin kill animation makes the WEEEEH sound again
Kick/Ban icon remains persistent on screen if chat is open after voting ends
Made it more clear you can change the chat type (Free Chat VS Quick Chat) in the game settings if you are logged in
Various localization fixes
Players will stop moving when meetings are called
Whew! Wondering what's next? Make sure you check out the Among Us Roadmap to see what our plans are.
Just a quick update, but as part of the Summer Games Fest, we revealed a roadmap for Among Us' future.
Here's what we have planned:
The next big update will be 15 player support with new colors (including Rose, Gray, Tan, and more), a slight graphics update, mobile controller support, and more. Details on this coming to you sooner than you think...!
Then, in no particular order, here's what we want to work on:
A new map - Map 5! Very secret. What's it gonna be on? Don't ask me! I'm sworn to secrecy, I'm bad at secrets, and I would like to keep my job.
Achievements. For anyone who wants to prove they are pros at the game. AKA not me, I'm a very anxious Impostor.
Account linking between platforms. All your save data and cosmetics, available on your platform of choice.
New roles and ways to play. VERY SECRET. OR MAYBE I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT'S UP.
Hide n’ Seek mode. Come out come out wherever you areee.
Visor cosmetics. Even more ways to fix a ship in style! Yes it may block your vision but at least you'll be fashionable.
Consoles (Xbox and PlayStation). I get it, you want to know when. I can't tell you. I'M SORRY. When I can I will!!
Take a nap at some point, idk, the churn of capitalism is rough
Once we can give you more concrete dates we will, but there’s A LOT to be excited for in the coming months. Keep an eye out this weekend too on our Twitter or via the newsletter... there's more we have in store for you.
Not a lot of super exciting news for this dev log as we work on fixing bugs and getting everything ready for our next update. But here’s a quick run down of what we’ve been working on. Boop.
Bug Updates
If you don’t see your bug mentioned here, know that we’re aware of them! (E.g. missing skins, lag, various visual glitches, etc.) Here’s a brief summary of what’s been fixed though:
Airship uses proper background on Create Game screen now
Authentication issues when players tried to sign in has been fixed on PC and mobile
Ping counter re-added
Region text no longer always shows North America, even when in other regions
"PLAYERNAME left the game." alignment fixed
Other scaling/formatting issues fixed
Miscellaneous fixes to accounts - mostly backend stuff
Reflow in 2021.4.12 removed MismatchedProductUserIDs and NullContinuanceToken errors (multi account/device support)
Vitals color bug has been "fixed" (vitals no longer shows color names at all)
Stuck on Quick Chat and changing your username? If you’ve created an Account (or gotten parental permission) and are logged in, you can change the chat in Settings and your name in the Account tab!
Progress Report
- Art style: We're working on an updated art style for Among Us! Don’t worry though, it’s not too different from what you’re used to. Just cleaner lines and other improvements that’ll make animating it on the backend easier. … But imagine how horrifying it would be if it looked like this though.
- 15 player lobbies: Gather all your friends because we’re going to expand the lobby sizes! (Don’t have enough friends? Then invite your enemies. Make new enemies. Everyone is now your enemy.)
- Colours: There are a total of 6 new colours coming to the update, which we'll be revealing more in May. Considering all the colours we already have, it was actually kind of difficult to find colours that will automatically be visually distinct from all the other ones. But in terms of accessibility and colourblindness, we hope to move away from colours being the defining way people identify each other. We’re workshopping ideas for that though.
- New meeting screen: A bigger lobby means our old meeting screen won’t be able to handle all the new crewmates, so expect a bit of reworking there. There’ll also be a new intro when meetings are called that accentuates the information between the reporter and who exactly died between rounds, as seen below. Note the image below might not be final.
- General QoL update: We’ve been working with some partners to get our whole website revamped, which hopefully will give us a more centralized place to give you these updates and all our news. Plus we hope to get a better bug reporting system and general page where you can keep up to date on all the bug fixes we’ve been working on. It’s been all over the place so far, and having a more streamlined process will be easier for everyone!
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That’s all for now! Thanks for the patience as we tackle all the bugs and get this crew wrangled in. Keep an eye out for more announcements in the future though... we’ve always got a little secret something in the works.
Hop onto the newest Among Us map – the Airship! Out now on all platforms, work together on this airship to carry out the greatest plan... though whether that’s as a Crewmate or Impostor is another question.
This free map update includes:
The 4th map, and the biggest one yet
New tasks including jewel polishing, emptying trash (wow fun), and more
The ability to pick the room you start in
All new areas to explore (or get murdered in)
Improved mobility with ladders and moving platforms
New free hats including a heart pin, angry eyebrows, unicorn head, udder, and more!
Furthermore, an all-new Airship Skin Bundle is available for purchase! Check it out here and get fancy new gear to impress all your friends and enemies. Each new outfit in this bundle comes with its own custom kill animation! Not that you’ll need it. Since you’re not an Impostor... right? Right??
Code of Conduct
If you saw our dev log last week, you’ll know we have a new Code of Conduct and Account system. Please take the time to read through the Code of Conduct as you’ll be subject to them even if you claim you haven’t read it.
Right now it’s focused on reporting and moderation capabilities, but in the future we hope to add a friend system and the ability to transfer your cosmetics between devices.
You can only make on account per device - if multiple people are using the same device it'll be locked for the time being, but we're planning a hot fix for that soon.
You will be able to report if someone in the game is acting inappropriately, including: inappropriate names, inappropriate chat, cheating/hacking, and harassment/misconduct. Consequences can range from temporary to permanent bans (including alternate accounts).
You must create an account to access free chat (without it you will have to use Quick Chat for safety!) and to change your display name freely.
If you are under the minimum age of digital consent in your country (for most countries 13 is the minimum age), you have to get a parent/guardian's permission to access free chat (which then allows you to create an account), or change your display name.
Without an account (or if you're a minor who doesn't want to ask your parent/guardian for approval), you can still play via Guest Mode. This locks you to Quick Chat and doesn't allow you to change your name other than with a randomly generated name.
We’re still working on a number of measures to keep our game as safe as possible! This is just the beginning!
WHAT’S NEXT?
Provided everything goes well and there aren’t massive bugs we need to handle from the Airship launch, we’ve got lots on our plate in terms of future plans! With our 2 new recent programmer hires we're definitely on track for faster work. We’ll make a public roadmap at some point, but for now, here’s what’s on the table:
A full art style revamp! Puffballs has completely updated the art style with cleaner lines and an easier animation process. Can’t wait for you to see that soon!
We’re aiming to create larger lobby sizes so you can play with up to 15 players. Considering The Airship’s size, we hope this will be a fun way to gather with even more of your friends.
More frequent, transparent updates from us! One of our big goals is to just show you the development process, what goes on behind-the-scenes, and for you grow with us. We’ve learned so much and don’t want to hide anything from you when it comes to this stuff. It’s weird!
You’ve come so far with us, and we can’t wait to keep working on the game for you. You in? Cool! Spread the word and we can’t wait to see you in the game.
I wanted to jump in and quickly explain the account system that'll be launching with the map, since I'm going to assume once the update launches very few people are going to read the dev log, lol.
INFORMATION ON ACCOUNTS
Right now accounts are focused on reporting and moderation capabilities, but in the future we hope to add a friend system and the ability to transfer your cosmetics between devices. Cool? Cool!
You will be able to report if someone in the game is acting inappropriately, including: inappropriate names, inappropriate chat, cheating/hacking, and harassment/misconduct. Consequences can range from temporary to permanent bans (including alternate accounts).
Note that reports will be read by people (not bots!) and you will need to provide a reason as to why you are reporting.
No linking of multiple accounts yet (Steam account is only on Steam, mobile on mobile, etc.) It’ll be coming soon though.
You must create an account to access free chat (without it you will have to use Quick Chat for safety!)
You must create an account to freely change your display name. If you do not create an account, there will be randomized names you can choose from.
Usernames are not exclusive. Multiple people can have the same username. (So if you take the username "PuffballsUnited", other people can still use "PuffballsUnited".)
If you are under the minimum age of digital consent in your country (for most countries 13 is the minimum age), you have to get a parent/guardian's permission to access free chat (which then allows you to create an account), or change your display name.
Without an account (or if you're a minor who doesn't want to ask your parent/guardian for approval), you can still play via Guest Mode. This locks you to Quick Chat and doesn't allow you to change your name other than with a randomly generated name.
A corresponding Code of Conduct will be available on our website that outlines the expectations for our community and consequences.
The launch of an age gate, Quick Chat and an accounts system that requires children to obtain a parent/guardian's permission to use free chat or change their display names are all our initial efforts towards making it more safe for children to play Among Us, and comply with various global requirements in the process. Thanks for sticking with us!
Random Fun Bit
We showed off two of the new, free hats that'll be coming with the Airship update. Angry eyebrows and Unicorn hat!
There are still a few more to show off on Twitter as we lead up to the map drop.
There will also be an Airship Skin Pack you can buy along with the game. It'll include 3 new skins (one of which has a custom kill animation) and 13 new hats! You've probably spotted quite a few of them in the opening to the Airship's trailer.
See you in a week! Pray our servers don't die haha agh.