Among Us has taken over the world in 2020
but there was actually a time when the small indie studio InnerSloth was thinking about
giving up on the game entirely. The online social deduction game was far from
an instant hit when it came out in 2018 and the team has had their fair share of failed
projects in the past. Therefore, moving on to the next idea, was
nothing new for the members of InnerSloth. Marcus Bromander, the designer/artist, and
artist Amy Liu, met each other in middle school. Forest Willard, the team’s programmer, came
into the picture when he met Marcus and Amy in college. After they graduated, Forest started working
full-time for Microsoft, while Marcus became a full-time indie developer. One day the two friends started chatting about
developing games and how fun it is, however, Marcus said he couldn’t code and only knew
how to draw. Forest responded he only knew how to code. So, they decided to team up and combine their
skills. Their first project was something Marcus had
already started working on before teaming up with Forest and he described it as a top-down
ghost shooter that he made in Stencyl, a tool to make games quick and easy. The duo jumped into the idea without any planning
whatsoever and after a year of development, they realized it wasn’t really interesting,
going as far as describing the project as "Nuclear Throne, but not good". Next, they decided to do something that could
be developed in a smaller time frame. After three months of development they released
a mobile game called Dig2China! in January 2015. Having developed and successfully released
their first game, the two creators felt ready to tackle a bigger and more ambitious project,
yet still small enough so they could develop it in about six months' time. Marcus had the idea for a local-multiplayer,
twin-stick deathmatch game where players would gain favor with procedural gods each round
or be punished by them. It sounded interesting enough to start with
so production began in December 2015. This project was also the first time they
brought in Amy to help with the artwork. Once they had developed something that was
playable, the trio submitted the project titled Deitied to the Steam Greenlight service. To their surprise, Deitied was greenlit by
Steam in June 2016 but some players had some harsh criticisms. “Greenlight was a wakeup call. Players were quick to point out flaws that
we should have polished up front. We learned that for a Steam release, showing
something that looks any amount in progress is a mistake. This was also our first trailer, first real
marketing experience and first Unity game. So, a lot of learning happened after the execution
started. We honestly didn't think we'd get through
Greenlight but randomly after about a month, we were approved.” During this time, Forest was still working
full-time for Microsoft as a computer engineer and on top of that, Marcus and Forest lived
a four hour drive away from each other. This made development tricky and unable to
move along at a fast pace. By november 2016, development had become so
slow that Marcus decided to start remastering one of his other projects called the Henry
Stickmin series. Despite all of that, they both still wanted
to pursue a career in game development so the duo made efforts to make that dream easier. Marcus decided to move closer to Forest, who
made plans of his own to leave Microsoft. While all this was happening, Deitied disappeared
for about a month, followed by the announcement of its hiatus in December 2016. When their plans to go full-time together
eventually lined up in October 2017, they still hadn’t given up on their old project
and decided to give Deitied a fair shot this time around. Unfortunately, after spending a week rebuilding
old assets and iterating on the concept, it became clear that the game just wasn’t that
interesting. While it may seem like they wasted months
of their lives, Forest described it as a valuable experience. “In retrospect, spending a year iterating
a single design produced a lot of good things and we are now much better at finding fun;
but also, I have a lot of excitement to return with such a fixed destination. It should be much easier to return to that
point without also building on a year of mistakes. We learned when an idea just isn't working
out as planned, you need to drop the idea or drop the plan. Don't spend a year mashing them together. It's much easier said than done.” While Deitied may have been a failed project,
it did help convince the team to develop Among Us instead. “The alternative to repairing Deitied was
Among Us and developing that was exciting and felt right from the get-go.” The developers were inspired by the social
deduction game called Mafia, also known as Werewolves. In Mafia, players have to figure out each
other's identities in order to eliminate suspects that are trying to win the game by casting
doubt on the other players. The indie studio wanted to bring this style
of gameplay to a mobile party game setting. Remnants of this inspiration can be seen in
the very first prototype of Among Us on Google Play, which had the working title of “Space
Mafia” in the source files and can still be seen today in the URL of the Google Play
page. Later on in development, the team sat down
to brainstorm for a real title, something that would reflect that there’s a betrayer
in the party and Among Us seemed like the perfect fit. The team decided to develop Among Us on the
Unity engine since they now had more experience with the platform thanks to the Deitied project. All the artwork and animations were done with
Adobe Animate, formerly known as Flash. Marcus said that he wrote the main menu song
when he felt really depressed. At the time, Marcus had trouble writing music
in general so he decided to just bang something out, which became the main song for Among
Us. To help design the very first map of Among
Us, the Skeld map, Marcus used Google Images and typed in keywords like “reactor room”
to come up with ideas for little details to add to the map. The developers mentioned in interviews that
playtesting was difficult since you need quite a few people in the same lobby to properly
test the game. Therefore, they had to schedule playtests
weeks in advance to get all their friends together on the same day. Unfortunately, in the beginning, the early
versions of Among Us would immediately break once their friends joined the lobby. Forest needed to scramble to send them new
builds through Google Play and called the whole experience painful and frustrating. Interestingly enough, the creators always
tested the game with 7 to 8 people and had never tested it with 9 to 10 people before
release. InnerSloth launched an open beta on mobile
in June 2018, which was quite different from the version we know and play today. Back then Among Us only supported local multiplier
so the whole game was played through text chat only. To prevent players from trying to listen to
what the other players were doing during a match, the team didn’t implement any sound
effects whatsoever. Furthermore, the only available map at that
time was the Skeld map. Forest admitted that the mobile version didn’t
do great at release but thanks to the feedback from a vocal minority, InnerSloth decided
to implement online multiplayer. In August 2018, the studio launched an online
multiplayer beta version of the game on Itch.io in preparation for the Steam release. Now that Among Us supported online matches,
the developers realized they had to implement sound effects to make the game more engaging
to play without other people in the same room. Marcus had never really done sound design
before so he did what he could by mixing sound effects from sound packs that he had accumulated
over the years. Among Us was finally released on Steam on
November 16th, 2018 and the team now considered the game to be out of beta. The Steam release brought in more online players,
putting the servers to the test. At the start of development, the team used
a free Amazon server and Forest described it as the worst servers you can get. The only reason they went for it was to keep
production as cheap as possible. The multiplayer game saw its first big spike
in players by the end of 2018, which brought in thousands of players and kept lobbies alive
24/7. “Our first audience was Korea, and they
still constitute 50% of our Steam Among Us sales. That all started in December 2018 with Kevin
Choi. He found Among Us via itch.io and I think
that's because we got a day of promotion on the front page. This is literally the only promotion we have
expressly asked for.” The free Amazon server wasn’t able to handle
the new wave of players so five days before Christmas, Forest had to start working 14
hours a day to fix the server issues. He felt pressured to do so, because he and
the rest of the team didn’t want to lose the momentum the game was building. Forest further added that every time a new
wave of players came in, the servers would burn to the ground and he would have to build
them back up again. The developers listened closely to fans and
kept tweaking and updating the game to make the experience smoother and more enjoyable
but unfortunately Among Us was barely turning a profit. The indie studio was ready to give up on their
party game and move on to something new. “We stuck with Among Us a lot longer than
we probably should have from a pure business standpoint. We tried to quit and should have quit several
times. I mean, the original vision was local multiplayer
only. We put online out and it was received better
but you know, nothing too special. And we put it out, and said, ‘Alright, we’re
done.’ We were going to move on to the next game.” During these challenging times, the members
of InnerSloth luckily had enough savings to keep the development going for as long as
they wanted. Forest even said that he intentionally saved
up money during his time at Microsoft so that he wouldn’t have to throw in the towel if
Among Us wasn’t immediately among Steam’s top sellers. Suddenly however, in early 2019, a big YouTuber
started streaming the game and creating YouTube videos. “Godenot, who found our game on Google Play
earlier in 2019 (probably recommended by players? Possibly via Itch.io, even… I know he streamed from mobile before switching
to PC.) We had considered wrapping up Among Us back
then, because profitability was not in sight. But the Brazilian audience drove us to create
more content, and that was wise.” By May 2019, Among Us hit 1 million downloads,
which was a huge deal for the small developer. The success, along with the vocal fans, motivated
InnerSloth to add more content such as new maps, tasks and skins. Speaking of maps, the indie studio released
the second map Mira HQ, on August 8th, 2019. Lots of fans requested a moon or Mars map
but the developers didn’t like those obvious choices. Instead they wanted to create internal lore
and answer questions like “why are there crewmates?” and “what are they doing?”. InnerSloth isn’t a fan of obvious concrete
lore, so they rather incorporate subtle lore into the maps. Therefore, Mira HQ is designed like an excavation/surveying
company located in the sky. Amy said that one of the inspirations for
the map was Cloud City from Star Wars, since they wanted Mira HQ to resemble a skyscraper
in a vast area. While creating the map, Amy would type lots
of keywords into Google Images for inspiration and to draw references. She further added that the second map was
almost an underwater map and that they’d like to do something like that in the future. The third map, called Polus, was released
on November 12th, 2019 and this time around the developers gave into the fans’ requests
and created a planet map. However, they wanted to make the map their
own and not simply create something that resembles a moon or an existing planet. Furthermore, the third map was made to be
more open compared to the previous two in order to create more variety in matches. For some reason, fans wanted to be able to
play on a red planet but that felt too easy and obvious to the team, so instead Marcus
settled on a purple colored planet. While Marcus was designing the map, there
was a big snowstorm in his area and this inspired him to add snow to the Polus map. To add some contrast to the snow and to make
the planet more interesting, he also decided to add lava. Initially, both maps were priced at 4 dollars
each but they were permanently reduced to 2 dollars on January 6th, 2020 and eventually
made free on June 11th, 2020. It’s still possible to purchase the map
packs but they now only provide the skins that were bundled with the maps. 2019 certainly wasn’t a bad year for InnerSloth:
reaching over 1 million downloads and releasing two new maps were exciting milestones for
the team; but little did they know that soon their small indie title would become one of
the biggest games on the planet in 2020. Funnily enough, at the start of 2020, the
studio announced that development on Among Us would not continue any longer. “Among Us has had a very good run. We thought it was a completed game twice in
the past as we came back to add online multiplayer and two new maps. But as of the Polus release, we're sure that
Among Us is a complete game. There are always things that people want and
things we could potentially add but Among Us was always intended to be a small game
and we are just a team of three people with one programmer. So from now on, we are not adding more to
Among Us. There will be a few bug-fix-only updates and
a plan of price changes, then we will let Among Us take its natural course.” The announcement caused a considerable drop
off of players, as expected. However, not long after, things started taking
a turn once again when a UK-streamer called Kaif and his friends started streaming Among
Us. Forest explained that Kaif basically completely
reversed the drop off in players and brought in a new wave of European players, particularly
on Steam which was their number two marketplace at that time. Forest speculates that Steam had noticed their
newfound success, because in February 2020, Steam reached out to the team for a daily
deal on the storepage and InnerSloth agreed to 50% off the base price. Each of the two days during the daily deal
period, produced an entire month of sales, and left the studio with a higher baseline
of sales after, as well as a boatload of wishlists. These positive numbers prompted the developers
to do a Steam Summer Sale as well later that year and it was around this time that Among
Us started to go viral. The Summer Sale snowballed the game into minor
top seller visibility and Forest believes this is why the streamer Sodapoppin started
playing the game in the middle of July 2020 and broadcast it to millions of people. “I learned that he was told by Pluto, who
works on the partnerships team at Twitch and I have this, like, genealogy worked out in
my mind: I think Pluto learned about it from the Steam Sale, and the Steam Sale happened
because of a daily deal and there’s this whole chain of events. So then Sodapoppin pulled in xQc and Andy
Milonakis and a bunch of other guys, and they just played it.” The following months, Among Us grew into a
worldwide internet phenomenon. By the end of September 2020, the game exceeded
100 million downloads on Google Play. To put that into perspective, on September
3rd, the game only had over 10 million downloads. That same month, YouTube reported that videos
about Among Us were viewed 4 billion times. On top of that, Among Us hit 1.5 million concurrent
players across all platforms on September 5th according to InnerSloth. On september 29th the concurrent player count
peaked even further to as much as 3.8 million people. Among Us’ growing popularity spawned a lot
of internet memes and fanart, further demonstrating the game’s impact on the world. Marcus was thrilled to see his creations flourish
on the internet. “We’re getting sent really cool animations
and stuff too. That’s, I think, my favorite thing to see;
other people draw the characters that I created in their different styles. Even though they’re so simple, they can
still look different. I think that’s awesome.” The indie studio saw the big surge in sales
and players as the opportune time to start developing Among Us 2, since they had been
kicking around the idea of a sequel for a while by then. The announcement was made on August 18th,
2020 in one of the team’s blog posts, explaining that Among Us was never created to be able
to handle the huge numbers of concurrent players. They further said that this made adding more
content, without breaking the game, very difficult. Core sections of the game would need to be
recreated in order to fix those problems, which would be more difficult than building
a sequel from scratch, according to the developers. However, the studio quickly went back on their
words and cancelled Among Us 2 on September 23rd, 2020. Their main reason for continuing to support
the original Among Us is to get additional content to people faster. The developers don’t want to make people
wait several months, or perhaps years, for a sequel when the original game is still this
popular. InnerSloth’s current plan is to expand Among
Us step by step with all the ideas they had for the sequel. They explained in a blogpost that this is
probably the more difficult choice, because it means going deep into the core code of
the game and reworking several parts of it. Unsurprisingly, the team is extremely busy
now that their small indie game is being played by millions of people around the world and
they said it’s making it difficult to add more content as a result. To help solve that problem, they’re currently
looking to hire more people but that’s not an easy process according to the creators. They want to do their due diligence and hire
the right people for the right job, since Among Us is special to them and they don’t
want to mess it up. Despite that, as of november 9th, 2020, InnerSloth
hired Victoria Tran as their official Community Director, a job that previously mostly fell
on Amy’s shoulders. The indie studio is aware that many people
are experiencing server issues, as well as hackers that are ruining the fun for other
players and the developers said they’re working hard to fix those issues among other
things. The maximum concurrent playerbase has already
been increased by adding additional servers and regions. Additionally, in October 2020, colorblind
support for the “wires” task was added to the Steam beta, along with lobby customization
options. Future plans include adding accounts to help
eliminate hacking, improving gameplay for ghosts, adding customizable controls, a friends
system, more player colors, more supported translations, increasing player count to support
matches with 12 to maybe 15 people and adding more medium and bigger sized maps. One of those maps has already been announced
and will be a Henry Stickmin-themed location. Lastly, the developers are also looking into
porting the game to consoles but this has proven pretty difficult to achieve in the
game’s current state. InnerSloth explained that in order to achieve
the same experience on consoles, they would have to write a system for quick comms for
randoms, like Rocket League. They’re not sure yet if they would be able
to implement console voice chat or not. Looking back on Among Us’s entire development
so far, the team is very proud with where they are today, stating that they prefer snowballing
their way to the top instead of trying to create the perfect product from the get-go. “I personally like it, because I hate all
the fake manufactured stuff where you go through the motions — you do what everyone else
does and you win or you lose, and that’s the guaranteed strategy. It’s nice to see that it worked out for
us. Just going our own way and doing our own thing.” Whether Among Us can maintain its success
remains to be seen but as far as the developers are concerned, they’ve already succeeded
as a team and are looking forward to whatever comes their way in the future. “We’ve worked through a lot of things
with each other and made something we’re really proud of. So now that we’re in the spotlight, we have
a lot of trust in each other as we’re growing super quickly and tackling all new problems. And this success opens a lot of doors for
us which we’re excited to explore.”
All your videos are great, man. If anyone here likes game dev documentaries, go check this channel out.
Imagine being a developer and seeing your game go from something nobody had heard of for years to a game played by international politicians on Twitch for hundreds of thousands of people and played by thousands more. It must feel surreal.
This is an awesome video! Great and enlightening!
Btw - do you mind if I link our podcast where we interviewed the Innersloth devs?
I'm curious how they managed to scale their servers up to the insane playercount they have these days.
Really good and comprehensive video!
Hey Mate. Love your videos.
That was 20 minutes well spent :) thanks for that great video - very well documented.
Ahh lovely. Another retrospective type creator. I will subscribe succinctly. You and Liam Triforce shall dominate my home page!
Thanks for posting, I love videos like this as it's always useful to see what other developers go through (which often helps with our own game dev).