What does it mean to “speedrun” Among Us?

In certain situations Among Us players will ask if others want to “speedrun” the game, which can be confusing for some members of the community.

Among Us is a multiplayer game that lacks a set path or route, making the speedrun terminology incompatible. Nevertheless, Among Us players have co-opted the term to refer to two specific situations.

Speedrunning Tasks in Among Us

The first situation, and the one that can at least be done on a personal level without group coordination, is to speedrun tasks. Speedrunning tasks in Among Us refers to when a crewmate or crewmates focus solely on tasks so long as they have them.

The point of speedrunning tasks in Among Us is to complete them as quickly as possible in order to be able to pivot and benefit the team in other ways after. On the one hand, it can allow crewmates to aggressively push for a task win.

However, more commonly it’s a way for a crewmate to be able to dedicate themselves to keeping an eye on the crew without holding them back.

When a crewmate’s tasks are completed in Among Us they have the freedom to help other crewmates stay alive and keep watch on suspicious players without running the risk of setting the crew back by failing to do tasks.

Speedrunning tasks is risky, however, and often forces crewmates to go into dangerous sections of the map, putting themselves at risk of being an easy kill for imposters.

Speedrunning Votes in Among Us

The other situation speedrunning usually refers to in Among Us is when a group aims to vote off imposters as quickly as possible by using emergency buttons and calling votes based on limited evidence.

The goal with this type of speedrunning in Among Us is to hopefully vote off all imposters before voting off enough crewmates to allow imposters to win.

This requires group coordination in order to happen, however, although it does happen on some Among Us streams and YouTube videos. It often makes for a funny moment good for content creators.

This technique brings with it obvious risks, and can often amount to randomly guessing who the imposters might be. Nevertheless, it’s something some Among Us playgroups like to do from time to time to mix up the pace of the game.