Random Alternatives to Among Us

Among Us is the new big craze right now. Between it and Fall Guys, there’s a lot of cute backstabbing going on. But Among Us isn’t particularly new. Not at all. In fact, Mafia-style games have been going on for years in tons of different formats. I originally played my first Mafia-style game on an old writing forum and, personally, I feel like it’s still one of the best ways to play. But if you don’t fancy doing that and are looking for literally any similar game that ISN’T Among Us, well, here’s some rather random options for you.

Trouble in Terrorist Town – Garry’s Mod

In Terrorist Town, not everything is as it seems. Trouble in Terrorist Town, often shortened to TTT, is a community-made game mode in Garry’s Mod. In each round, you have your innocent terrorists, your traitor terrorists and your investigator terrorists, who can identify corpses. What makes Trouble in Terrorist Town interesting is that everyone can fight back. Everyone’s armed and ready to shoot. So innocent Terrorists can win by killing all the Traitor Terrorists. But, depending on the map, Traitors can have their own ways to fight back or unlock new weapons.

If you’re looking for more reliance on your team mates and don’t like fighting back, Murder, another Garry’s Mod game mode, is probably up your street. In Murder, one bad person has a knife, one good person has a gun and everyone else is unarmed. You have to work out who the person with the knife is so the person with the gun can shoot them.

The only downside to these are that you need Counter-Strike: Source to play them, as well as Garry’s mod and, well… you have to find a good community and server to play on. Once you do though, it’s soooo much fun.

Town of Salem

This isn’t actually a game I’ve played, but it’s a game I’ve had so many people bitch at me about. It’s another Mafia game and it’s definitely not a bad one. Town of Salem has a lot more roles and different jobs compared to Among Us and Trouble in Terrorist Town. I’d say that it’s much closer to the original Mafia games, but that can often lead to more frustration. Because everyone is forced into a role, that can make Town of Salem a lot more stressful. Especially when you can’t get the role you want.

If you are looking for something with a lot more complexities and nuance though, Town of Salem is probably for you.

Push the Button

The Jack Box Party Pack 6 game Push the Button is my personal favourite backstabbing game, because it mostly requires playing with friends. And can be played on your phone. Simply put, you have some aliens on board and you need to deduce who they are. Any player can push the button and choose to eject 1-3 players out of the airlock (depending on player count). A vote has to be unanimous for them to be kicked out, and the Aliens win if a human is incorrectly kicked out, and the humans win if the Aliens are kicked out.

How you deduce this isn’t based on killing, but on answering questions. Aliens and humans get different questions, but aliens can sabotage humans and their answers. Push the Button is much more focused on deducing and investigation than it is making wild accusations, especially because each player can only push the button and call a vote once.

The only problem with Push the Button is that it needs to be played locally or streamed. It’s wildly good fun though, especially if you are all in the same room.

You need good players.

All of these games are fun in different ways. But the real problem here is getting a good group to play with. Playing with randoms is simply too unpredictable, and made much harder because you don’t really know them. You can’t call someone’s bluff as well with a stranger as you can a friend, and the friendly backstabbing is what makes these games so fun.

You know what’s weird though?

We never really got a Team Fortress 2 mafia game. We got a LOT of other game modes, but never a “sussing out the Spy” game. Despite having the best backstabber of them all…