Among Us Players Could Become Guardian Angels When They Die

Among Us, the surprise hit two years in the making, could see some changes in the near future. InnerSloth is considering making dead players guardian angels who have the ability to save living players, similar to how the doctor role works in Mafia.

The Washington-based studio wants to give players more to do after they die, citing players that leave right after dying because it's "boring" to play as a ghost. Ghosts, players who are killed by impostors or getting voted off the ship, can still complete tasks after death. They can't participate in discussions or interact with anything else in the game and often don't do much until the match ends. It's essentially just something to keep them busy while they wait for the actual game to finish.

"[Balancing a change like that] is the hardest part," said InnerSloth programmer Forest Willard on Twitch's Weekly Gaming Show as first reported by Inverse. "We've thought of a lot about [making ghosts into] Guardian Angels and stuff like that, but it's a difficult thing to pull off but we're definitely thinking about those sort of things."

The three-person development team said the studio specifically wants to improve the game for the first person that gets killed. It "sucks" to be in that situation, according to designer Marcus Bromander, and the team is trying to "figure something out." We didn't get any more details on what a guardian angel ability would look like, though. How could they help their team without giving away the traitors' identities?

Among Us saw a surge of popularity this year after a number of streamers broadcasted their murder mystery matches on Twitch. The game has been downloaded over 100 million times across PC and mobile devices (it's free on mobile). The popularity has also created a cheating problem that InnerSloth is trying to squash. A planned sequel was scrapped in favor of adding more content to the base game. This should keep the community more together than if they had released an entirely new title.