Three New Roles
On June 18, 2024, we released new roles for the first time since 2021! Roles are at the core of the Among Us gameplay experience so both we, as the developers, and the players were excited about this release. As a brief summary, the three roles are:
Tracker - a Crewmate who can place a tracking device on another player and watch their movements on the map
Noisemaker - a Crewmate who sends out an alert to everyone when killed
Phantom - an Impostor who can turn invisible to stalk their targets or to get away from a kill
Role Responsibilities
Take a small group of roles from conception to release
Work with all departments to ensure the roles are release-ready and a marketing runway is in place
Organize playtests with new and recurring playtesters
Ensure the roles are compatible on a wide range of platforms from mobile to PS5
Design Goals
When I was first taked to release a set of roles, these were the design goals I set:
Easy to learn, difficult to master - have at least one role with gameplay depth
Roles for everyone - ensure the roles have a wide range in their skill floor and ceiling
Unique roles - release roles that have a unique identity
Add a new layer to the core experience - add an element to the social deduction of the game to make matches feel fresh and new
Animated trailer revealing each of the roles
Design Challenges
Anti-cheat - anticipate ways hackers might cheat with the new roles, prioritize different solutions, and work with the progamming team to minimize the impact
Latency hiding - design solutions around high latency connections that may affect input feedback, animations, and gameplay states
Balancing with other roles and other systems - each new role introduces new systems that will interact with other systems from sabotages, other abilities, and traversal mechanics. These cross-system interactions must be accounted for to make sure the correct behavior is defined
