InnerSloth’s Among Us heavily emphasizes both teamwork and deception through its chat system, but the average emergency meeting lasts only a few minutes, so players have either borrowed or developed some simple slang to streamline the process. Among Us is an online competitive mystery game based around the players’ abilities to communicate effectively with each other. Once a match begins, players take control of a group of cartoonish astronauts in a variety of science-fiction environments. Each player is designated a crewmate or imposter role and expected to carry out various goals throughout the map. Crewmates focus on performing simple tasks and monitoring the behaviors of the other players. Meanwhile, Imposters sabotage the Crewmates’ endeavors while also isolating and killing them.
Crewmates can call emergency meeting or report dead bodies and vote on whether or not players will get ejected from the match. Imposters do their best to mislead players into ejecting the wrong players. This process entails lots of discussion, but to make sure players can’t sustain meetings for too long, they are time-limited to a few minutes. As a result, a good amount of the language used by players is short, snappy slang made to practically exchange common details with ease.
Most of this vocabulary tends to be slang borrowed from the real world. Because Among Us is a free mobile game, plenty of what players say is written as if it were a text message. Words are shortened, and letters are often omitted to keep things moving as smoothly as possible. Here are the most commonly-used phrases in Among Us and what they mean.
What Sus Means In Among Us
The most common example of this kind of language is “sus.” Sus is a shortening of the word suspect or suspicious. It’s the go-to accusation for when one player believes another might be or is the imposter. Alternatively, Imposters can use it to divert attention away from themselves and towards an unsuspecting innocent crewmate.
What AFK Means In Among Us
Not all of the slang used in Among Us is everyday language. Among Us is also available to PC players via Steam, so plenty of gamerspeak makes its way into the game’s vocabulary. One players will often throw out is the term “AFK.” Unlike sus, which is a simple shortening of single word, AFK is an acronym for the phrase “Away From Keyboard.” The phrase originated with early PC gamers who would often need to excuse themselves mid-match for various reason. Since then the term has become common among gamers everywhere, even with ones who don’t play on keyboards. Since Among Us is also a PC game, it wasn’t long before AFK became a common term players use whenever they need to leave the screen for a moment or two.
What Where & Vent Means In Among Us
Other Among Us language are just shortened thoughts instead of individual words or acronyms. When a player reports a dead body, players often immediately ask “Where?” to find out the body’s location and therefore the most likely suspects. It’s a simple question that gets the conversation started and forces players to present alibies to excuse themselves from the list of likely suspect. The question also forces players to learn map locations and different tasks. Naming where they were and what they were doing is a crewmate’s greatest ally when establishing an alibi. Similar to “where” is the word “vent,” which Among Us players use as both a verb and a noun to describe how Imposters use vent openings throughout the map to swiftly move from location to location.
Beyond that, Among Us’ language is fairly simple or self explanatory. Other terms, like a player’s color, are just simple ways to refer to each individual without needing to learn 5-10 gamertags every match. It’s important for new players to learn these terms, even if they are simple, in order to succeed. The game is all about discussion, so effectively (or deceptively) communicating with other crewmates is integral to both surviving and winning games.
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