A new mod for Among Us allows players near each other to speak to one another in game.
This new mod drastically alters the way Among Us can be played, and opens up new avenues for strategies in the game. Although the mod isn’t fully fleshed out yet, it does appear to have a lot of potential for future games of Among Us.
How does proximity chat affect Among Us?
Note: This mod is still being developed, and is not yet available to anyone, except for a few content creators.
Proximity chat in Among Us introduces a whole new avenue for communication into the game, but it doesn’t always benefit both teams evenly. This kind of communication allows the crew to share information when near one another, and helps them coordinate in a way that reduces the risk of sharing information with the imposters.
However, it also allows the imposters to coordinate as well. If the imposters are able to find a secure location to discuss their plans, they can strategize and move in sync with each other. In the unmodded version of Among Us, imposters are already encouraged to stick close in order to score double kills and break groups.
But with this mod, they can, instead, split up and kill on opposite sides of the map, in order to fake double kills in a way that can result in both of them ending up less suspicious.
However, even with these benefits for the imposters, this Among Us mod will almost always benefit the crew more than the imposters, as the added information allows them to clear crewmates and infer imposters more easily.
How should the rules change to support this Among Us mod?
Fortunately, Among Us allows playgroups to play the game their way. Anyone who wants to use this mod may consider changing how long meetings last. Because players are able to share information outside of meetings, it might be more worthwhile to have an extremely low discussion/voting time.
If players only have 30-45 seconds to vote, then it encourages players to talk more with the proximity feature. This makes meetings less important and instead turns them into dedicated voting windows. With these Among Us rules, it might be more useful to think of the report function as a way to get all players in the same room.
With so little time on the meeting, Among Us playgroups would be encouraged to skip and discuss afterwards, only to call another meeting when they’re ready to vote.
Overall, it adds an interesting dynamic to the game, but it will take some experimentation to figure out what works.
For now, the proximity chat mod is still being developed, though beta versions have been made available to certain content creators. Anyone who wants to see how it plays can check out the video below to see what happens.