Imposters, it’s time to get ready for your best performance yet.
Among Us is now available in VR. It is no simple port (though unofficial attempts in the form of amateur mods on social VR platforms have existed for some time). To make the game immersive, Innersloth partnered with XR game studio Schell Games known for titles like Until You fall , and the I Expect You to Die series. With a VR headset, you can immerse yourself in a 3D version of the traditionally 2D game, navigating the various tasks aboard your spaceship as you try to spot who the imposter in it really is.
Though the game has been quite recently released, many critics are praising it for the life. It’s revived into the once-prolific multiplayer game. But what is Among Us VR all about?
Among Us VR is meant for players 13 and up. Violence is cartoony but graphic and inescapable. The title is also necessarily social so the effort at protecting young players is nice, even though it doesn’t work at all ever. The gameplay is complex when executed correctly by mature players – and equally complex when operated in ways a mature player doesn’t expect.
Navigating Menus, the Tutorial, and Online Gameplay
When first booting up Among Us VR, players are prompted to enter a birth date. You can lock this in on your headset, or you can choose to require a birth-date entry on each boot.
The main menu is simple. Your standard settings options are there, as are your customization options. Change the color of your crewmate and trick it out with little hats. Some hats are free, and some hat packs are available for purchase.
The two largest buttons that dominate the main menu are to play online and learn how to play. The learn-how-to-play option is an offline tutorial that takes you through several aspects of gameplay without other users running around murdering you.
Learning the Ropes
Because the tutorial is representative of so many aspects of gameplay and to respect the privacy of online players, all of the screenshots in this review were taken in the offline tutorial or provided by Schell Games.
The tutorial takes you through life as a crewmate, solving tasks, pushing buttons, reporting bodies, and getting murdered. Then, you experience the afterlife (dead crewmates can’t vote, communicate with the living, or report bodies, but they can still complete tasks). You also get to play as the Impostor, climbing through vents, sabotaging the ship, and killing crewmates.
Unfortunately, the tutorial is limited to two rooms on a fairly large map. It also doesn’t include all of the tasks that you’ll need to complete when playing a full game. However, it’s still a nice introduction.
The controls are smooth. All of the tasks could theoretically be hand-tracked, but movement is controlled with the controllers, so they’re a must-have. There’s also a button to bring up the ship map and do some other basic commands. The controller layout isn’t overly complex or challenging, and all major controls are spelled out in the tutorial and are changeable in settings.
Movement is smooth, and your view goes into a sort of tunnel vision while you’re moving to prevent motion sickness.
Taking It Online
There are two main options for playing Among Us VR online, one for smaller and shorter games, and one for longer and more populated matches. A shorter game might only have five players including one Impostor, while the longer games have more crewmates and more Impostors. Other than that, the gameplay is the same.
There’s no formal breakdown of how a game plays out in terms of round length or anything like that. But, there is a sort of structure. Here’s how it plays out, as I understand it:
The Impostors can murder one crewmate and sabotage one ship component per round. A round culminates in an “emergency meeting” called when a body is discovered. All of the players converge on the cafeteria to try to decide who the Impostors are, followed by a round of voting, during which the players vote out one player – who may or may not be the Impostor.
There are a few gameplay elements that make things a little trickier. For example, Impostors can still fix sabotages and report bodies. This helps them make it look like they’re really part of the team. Further, fixing sabotages usually requires standing still and facing a wall for a few seconds – a prime opportunity to get murdered by an Impostor.
Do you have to buy a new game to play the VR version?
Unfortunately, even if you already have the regular Among Us game, you’ll still have to pick up the new version if you want to play it in VR. Among Us VR is available for only $9.99, keeping a similarly modest price point as the original game did.
Once you download the game, you’ll of course need a VR headset to play. Unfortunately, you can only play with others who are playing the game in the VR version, meaning you cannot join in a room with a player who is playing the traditional Among Us.
Make sure to follow all of the download instructions for the platform you’ve purchased the game for and set up your headset so you have the best visuals possible to improve your gameplay experience.
All things considered, Among Us VR is great fun at a great price!