It’s been out for two years but has just received a massive boost in popularity — Among Us is taking the gaming world by storm, charting in Steam’s top ten best-sellers. So there’s definitely a niche for whodunit cooperative mystery solving.
That’s no shock, given the slew of board games that have catered to this market for decades now, but while less are on offer these days, there are still plenty of virtual games that bring people together to oust the liar among us.
10 Secret Neighbor
Following on from the success of Hello Neighbor, Secret Neighbor came out in 2019 with a fairly different concept, one that’ll be more familiar to those who have delved into the space station of Among Us to find out whose killing fellow astronauts.
Secret Neighbor takes the slasher-ESC madman of the last game and puts him into a multiplayer setting, as a group of intruders attempts to suss out which one of them is the neighbor in disguise.
9 Enemy On Board
Enemy on Board’s premise is Among Us verbatim. Two players are alien imposters and everybody else is a part of the crew who are working towards repairing the spaceship. However, it’s all 3D with a birds-eye-view camera.
It’s currently in early access but it does have plenty of positive reviews on its Steam page so its safe to say that it’s one of the better murder mystery games out there and it’ll be a familiar romp for those who have played Among Us.
8 Town Of Salem
The last major standalone whodunit murder game that dominated with a number of streamers playing as well as ranking highly in the charts has to be Town of Salem.
Where in games such as Among Us and Enemy on Board there are two factions at play, Town of Salem boasts three — neutral, town and mafia. They work in opposition to be the last team standing but nobody knows who’s who, so the job of the town is to suss out the werewolves, serial killers, and arsonists on top of the mafia as they’re picked off one by one. Town themselves have a variety of roles too from investigator to jailor to vigilante which means that there’s plenty for the bad-guys to fake.
7 Push The Button (Jackbox Party Pack 6)
The Jackbox Party games are a streamer delight as well as a fun inclusion to any party, especially in the midst of social distancing, but you can absolutely play them online with buds.
One of the game modes in the sixth pack is called Push the Button which places you onto a ship that has been infiltrated by alien imposters who look identical to the crew. There’s a wealth of tests to try and identify these intruders which you partake in. Much like Among Us, it’s all about the last team standing.
6 Deceit
Whilst many of the other alternatives on this list are indie, abstract murder mysteries, Deceit offers something a little bit more traditional with its FPS combat.
Where you are is unknown but the goal is to escape — you’ll bump into other players who may or may not be infected and it’s up to you whether to trust them. Gathering the necessary means to break free might mean taking no chances and beating down on anyone who gets in your way, so there’s a lot more freedom in your actions.
5 Garry’s Mod: Trouble In Terrorist Town
Garry’s Mod started out as a simple sandbox alternative with some fun minigames to boot way back when, building itself on the source engine, pulling from plenty of Valve titles such as Half-Life and Team Fortress 2.
One of the more popular game modes to sprout up over the years is Trouble in Terrorist Town. Really, you’re all the bad guys, as you play the role of terrorist, but there are traitors amongst you who are out for blood. The aim is to suss them out, kill them, and stay alive, but, like Deceit, it’s a no-pause, constantly rolling FPS with a wealth of means to take down foes, all depending on the server. Will the traitor whip out a minigun and take out a crowd or lure you into a room only to lock you in and set off some C4?
4 Unfortunate Spacemen
Unfortunate Spacemen is yet another entry that’s all about alien imposters taking the form of the crewmates, slowly picking them off one by one as they work to figure out who it is that is lying.
There’s a lot of customization, a story mode, proximity-based voice chat and ranks, so it’s a lot more complex than Among Us which may be off-putting to some but also the perfect reel for others.
3 Barotrauma
FPS’, birds-eye-view isometrics, community-based mods, party games, and chat-based point-and-clickers, the whodunit concept has been stretched to plenty of different genres, so it should come as no surprise that someone decided to make a side-scroller.
You have to fix the submarine with your crew, completing goals to try and survive the harsh, gritty, grunge-filled nightmare you’re embroiled in, but, as you’ll have guessed by now, there’s a traitor with opposing goals.
2 The Escapists
The Escapists is perhaps the most different of entries on this list, as the aim isn’t so much as to suss out a traitor in order to survive in some isolated setting that screams Alien but rather to break out of prison by your lonesome or with some buds.
However, it’s top-down, goal-based gameplay feels extremely similar to Among Us, with a touch more polish. There’s plenty of choice to be had in the way you break free and lots of retro, classic designs that’ll give you a good touch of nostalgia.
1 Project Winter
To get back to the formula of innocents versus malevolent scheming traitors, Project Winter is an ambitious, beautiful, refined experience that takes the premise of games like Among Us and the harsh isolated setting of classics like The Thing to put friends or strangers at each other’s throats.
You’re not put on a spaceship with no potential for escape, given a goal to repair the systems, but rather strapped to the wilderness with the aim of surviving long enough to escape back to civilization, all the while somebody or some people in your party are working at opposite ends.
NEXT: Among Us: 10 Tips That Many Players Need To Know
