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A new Among Us mod has added another role for crewmates, that of a Doctor, who has the ability to revive dead characters.
This mod fundamentally alters how Among Us is played, and will require some playgroup adaptation to work. Nonetheless, it does at least give crewmates a new tool in their fight against the imposters in Among Us.
New roles in Among Us
Among Us is based on classic hidden role games like Werewolf and Mafia, with the crucial difference of having a real-time space for players to move around in. This three dimensional space replaces the more rigid turn-based structure of games like Werewolf. While this is good for giving the game its own identity, it does mean it lacks the multiple types of roles games like Werewolf were known for.
In Werewolf, figuring out someone else’s randomly assigned role is often as useful as figuring out which team they are on. For example, knowing that someone has the ability to protect a potential victim, or even eliminate an opponent who chooses wrongly, allows teams to coordinate their efforts and come up with more elaborate plans.
For Among Us, a lot of roles would only serve to make the game more complicated, and have the potential to make the game incredibly unbalanced by giving the crewmates a powerful tool.
This is the case with the Doctor mod, as reviving a crewmate gives the crew perfect information regarding at least one of the imposters. Therefore, it’s encouraged that Among Us playgroups curious about this mod agree that revived crewmates not tell anyone who killed them.
Could roles ever be implemented into Among Us?
Hidden roles would be at least one way to give the crew more variety in their play. Giving someone the ability to bring back the dead might be a bit too much for Among Us, but something simple like giving maps specific features that can only be accessed by certain crewmembers might be interesting.
However, splitting up what the crewmates can do by roles might not be the best use of developer time, as they’d likely get more mileage off of just implementing features that everyone can try.
Instead it might make more sense to add roles which adjust a player’s goal. For example, a common role in various hidden role games is that of the Jester. Jesters have the goal of being falsely executed by the crew, encouraging them to be as suspicious as possible.
This has the added benefit of making the crewmates have to second guess themselves when accusing someone of being an imposter, as there are usually penalties associated with killing the Jester.
There is certainly a lot of design space left to explore in Among Us, though it will likely be a while before anything that ambitious gets implemented.
