Among Us team was "basically done" and almost canceled in 2019

Few of us have escaped the charm of the indie party hit Among Us, but it turns out that the fan-favorite social deduction game came much closer to being canceled than perhaps we first thought.

In an interview with Visionaries and spotted by PCGN, Innersloth co-founder, Marcus Bromander, revealed that the team was "basically done" with the game at the beginning of 2019 and had all but given up on it.

"We were basically done with it at the start of 2019," Bromander said. "We had put out our third map, we'd done enough bug fixes that the game functioned, and we're like: all right. That's it. No more. Time to work on something else.

"When Among Us took off, again we were like: you know, what do we do now? We have so many eyes on this - we should ride the wave and either make a sequel."

Interestingly, it was only a sudden surge in popularity that made Innersloth knuckle down and work on "improving the original".

"We were thinking of a feature or something that didn't quite fit in. And we were like: oh, we'll just save it for Among Us 2," he added. 

"And so now, with all these eyes, we started thinking: okay, is it time to think about that again? Should we do Among Us 2 or should we update the game everyone is already playing? And that's what we ended up settling with.

"We did no marketing at all," Bromander explained. "We just put it out and it kind of spread by word of mouth."

Bromander also revealed that whilst the studio has had takeover "offers", he "didn't want to have someone above us dictating what we should be doing".

It's a good time to get into the sleuthy action of Among Us, which added a big update back in November that gave us several new roles with unique abilities, fundamentally changing how the colorful whodunnit game is played. There's also now a storefront with new cosmetics, a battle pass, achievements, and more.

Three new Crewmate roles were added at the time - Scientist, Engineer, and Guardian Angel - and one new Impostor role, the Shapeshifter. 

For other games to play with friends, check out our guide to the best co-op games available now.