The slow motion hit of the video game 'Among Us'

"It wasn't created to be that big."

This is how InnerSloth, the developer of

,

expressed itself

about the sudden success of its video game, which has skyrocketed in recent weeks.

Only on mobile devices it already exceeds 86 million downloads, leading the ranking of downloads in various application stores.

And despite the fact that the video game began to be marketed in 2018, 70% of those downloads have occurred in the last month and a half.

This unexpected success has had practical consequences, such as server problems, which were not prepared for so many players at the same time.

With the aim of "resisting growth", the developer has announced on her blog that there will be a sequel, although the date is unknown.

"It is extremely difficult to add more things without breaking existing ones," the company says.

This stat from TwitchTracker.com shows the meteoric rise of the video game on Twitch since its launch

At the beginning of its life, in 2018,

was only available for mobile devices and players had to be connected to the same network, which greatly reduced its possibilities.

But the development team had a lot of faith in its creation, so they kept reworking it for months based on feedback from players.

And it was not only a matter of faith, but also monetary.

"I think we were lucky to have enough savings to be able to get ahead while

did not sell so much," confessed programmer Forest Willard in an interview with the specialized medium

.

Once the game had taken a leap in quality, his team decided to relaunch it on Steam, thus expanding its reach.

It was June 2018, and what came next is not entirely clear.

First of all, it seems that "someone in Korea found it" and started to make it fashionable, according to the textual explanation to

by Marcus Bromander, artist, animator and designer at InnerSloth.

Then "a Brazilian youtuber" arrived, whose fans started playing it.

And it was growing slowly, until a Twitch star, Chance "Sodapoppin" Morris, who has almost three million followers on this platform, started playing it in mid-July 2020, definitely making it fashionable.

Since then, many

famous

began broadcasting live games on the Twitch platform, with special success among the Spanish public.

A recent statistic shows that among the four

whose followers have spent the most time watching games, there are three Spaniards: Auronplay, Ibai and ElRubius.

It has also been influenced by the fact that some media personalities, such as Argentine footballer Sergio "Kun" Agüero and Belgian Thibaut Courtois, have played it.

"Every day that passes I'm more from Barça, man," exclaimed Ibai after being killed by the Real Madrid goalkeeper in one of the games.

For the three-person team that makes up InnerSloth,

late fame

is unheard of.

None of his other creations (

, released in 2015, and

, released last August), offer comparable numbers.

And it is that in recent weeks,

has had more transmissions on Twitch than perfectly consolidated titles with large investments such as

,

or

.

The keys to your success

Between 4 and 10 players participate

in each game of

.

One or two play the role of impostors, while the rest are crew members.

The crew members are busy completing maintenance tasks on a spaceship as a minigame, while the impostors try to boycott the ship and kill their companions without being discovered.

Upon finding a corpse or seeing something suspicious, any member can call an emergency meeting - which is done through a voice chat in which all players participate - and vote for who they think is the imposter.

In the few minutes that each meeting lasts, the participants debate, point and lie in order to adapt to their roles.

Only in the case of reaching a majority of votes is the participant expelled and it is revealed whether or not she is the impostor.

'Crewman, there is an impostor among us', reads this promotional image of the video game

The main virtues of

are the high degree of socialization and simple mechanics, designed for both regular and occasional players.

By basing its standards on other well-known entertainments, such as the Werewolf card game from Castronegro, assimilating them is fairly straightforward.

Then you only need a few games to get to know the map and learn the controls, gaining agility.

But where the fun really is is in the meetings, which require all kinds of skills to defend our innocence.

Then the group of players changes the strict silence of the rest of the game for anarchy, because in the few seconds of margin to vote for the supposed impostor, they say whatever it takes to avoid being thrown out of the ship.

The quality of the accusations and lies thrown in voice chat depends on the victory of one side or the other.

This meeting point leads to tense and comic situations at the same time, which encourages anecdotes among the participants.

"It's like on Twitter, you have to blame people without evidence," noted user Krotz in a review on Steam.

"I lost all my friends," Dabeast lamented.

But Tomilobito, another player, added: "It's fun to play with friends, so you discover that everyone has their dark side, or rather their real side, lies, deception and above all ... the desire to kill you."

This and other user comments summarize the love and hate that surfaces in groups of friends when playing

.

Added to the simplicity of the proposal is high accessibility due to its low price and the diversity of platforms on which it can be played.

On iOS and Android the title has no cost, just advertising, while for PC on Steam it is 3.99 euros and in the developer's itch.io profile it can be obtained for about 5 euros.

In addition, thanks to

, each participant can choose on which platform they will play with their friends, so it is not necessary for the whole group to do so in the same system.

Another proof of the success of the video game in Spain is that the networks have been filled with hundreds of memes.

Accounts such as Among Us Out of Context and Among Us España, with more than 100,000 and 10,000 followers respectively, share humorous material, fanarts and daily news.

"Follow me or I vote for you ...", says the biography of Among Us Out of Context, a phrase that alludes to the practice with which to find the impostor and expel him from the ship.

Other profiles, such as Among Us DISCORD ESPAÑOL, connect players from all over the country through 11 rooms to enjoy the title.

My face after defending my best friend the whole game and in the end it turned out to be the impostor pic.twitter.com/GrIJ7UPDfU

- Among Us Out of Context (@OutAmon) September 14, 2020

Either due to circumstances or a stroke of luck, since its rediscovery

has quickly crept to the top of the best-selling video game charts.

On Steam, it's number one day after day.

The title has dovetailed with the pandemic's encounter restrictions and the pursuit of entertainment within the home.

On this subject, Willard indicated to Kotaku that "the current climate, with social distancing, is amplifying the potential that already existed".

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