Among Us devs admit they felt “burnt out” and “overwhelmed” following the indie game’s success • Eurogamer.net

The team behind Among Us, Innersloth, has opened up about feeling “overwhelmed” and “burnt out” after the success of their cult classic multiplayer detective game during lockdown.

“Among Us going viral, it was just like, ‘OK, this is my life,'” said artist Amy Liu. “The pressure to get things done quickly was really high. September to December, we’re talking to Xbox, PlayStation. They were gonna try to get Among Us on these platforms, which usually takes many months – like, half a year to a year. We were like, ‘Three months! We’re gonna try that.'”

“I definitely burnt out,” Liu told Anthony Padilla (thanks, Kotaku). “It was tough because during all of this, we weren’t able to see friends and family. Being so tired from working, I couldn’t even go visit my family during covid and had to spend holidays alone… that was definitely the hardest time.”

“When you’re under hundreds of millions of [peoples’ worth] of pressure, they don’t understand that it takes months. The server issues should be fixed tomorrow, adding new stuff should be next week – it’s so easy [to them]. It’s a lot of pressure. It’s overwhelming,” added programmer, Forest Willard.

“There was a while at the beginning of the year, when a lot of the negative comments were really starting to get to me, and – combined with the overwhelmed feelings – I was just like, ‘I don’t even want to work on this anymore. I’m done,'” admitted game designer, Marcus Bromander.

For the full interview, head to Padilla’s YouTube channel.

InnerSloth recently added 15-player support to Among Us – up from the prior limit of 10 – as well as new colours, mobile controller support, and a “slight graphics update”.

A new mode called Hide and Seek is also on the way to Among Us. It seems seekers will be given a very small radius in which they can see other players, leaving it up to those hiding to out-manoeuvre their pursuers.

And that’s not the only major gameplay change; after modders started doing it themselves, some new roles are officially being added to the mix, including Sheriff and Scientist roles.