Why Fans Of Among Us Should Play Unfortunate Spacemen
Unfortunate Spacemen is a free-to-play social-deduction game from Geoff "Zag" Keen and New Blood Interactive. If you enjoy Among Us, there's a strong chance you'll like this 2016 release as well. Like Among Us, Unfortunate Spacemen is about survival, cooperation, and betrayal. You and up to 15 other players must complete tasks throughout the various maps to complete your objective — except that one of the players is a shapeshifting monster who is running around killing everyone. Truly unfortunate.
Truly, this first-person game has a lot in common with the super popular Among Us, another social deduction game released in 2018 by InnerSloth, but there are a few notable differences.
When the chips are down, fingers get pointed, decisions are formed, and mistakes inevitably get made — which is what fans love about social deduction games. Players often fail at games like Among Us and Unfortunate Spacemen because, given enough time, paranoia can override even the most confident players' logic. Even so, they can be a lot of fun. Spotting the monster or Imposter is easy when cooler heads prevail.
IGN has described Unfortunate Spacemen as simply "Among Us with guns," but there's a surprising amount of depth to the game.
In space, no one can hear you squabble with teammates
"You guys gonna listen to Gary? You're gonna let him give the orders? I mean, he could be one of those things!" says a frantic character with a revolver aimed at him in John Carpenter's 1982 sci-fi horror film The Thing.
Unfortunate Spacemen includes a lot of obvious influences from sci-fi/horror franchises, such as Alien, Dead Space, and The Thing. While the two games share the same paranoid spirit, Unfortunate Spacemen has a darker "survival horror" style when compared to the colorful and two-dimensional look of Among Us. Also unlike Among Us, Unfortunate Spacemen gives its players the ability to hunt down and kill the bad guy. Effectively doing so means victory for the crew.
"With this in mind, the monster must work tirelessly to erode the trust and friendship between the spacemen," MandaloreGaming said in his positive review of the game. "When they become mistrustful, selfish, and noided, the monster's basically already won."
Another key difference from Among Us is that players in Unfortunate Spacemen get special perks. For the crew, these include "profession" perks, utilities, and defenses. Monsters get perks such as "mutations" and stealth.
You can't handle the truth!
One of the biggest similarities between Unfortunate Spacemen and Among Us came in October 2020 when the former added "the tribunal" system, a safe zone for players to discuss and vote who they think the monster is. Fans of Among Us may find these tribunals to be incredibly similar to that game's "emergency meetings."
However, there are some big differences between the two. For instance, the tribunal is available three times throughout a match if there are at least three players who are alive. Also, unlike Among Us, the tribunal doesn't automatically relocate players to the meeting space. Unfortunate Spacemen players have to physically move to the location to vote, and participation isn't mandatory. According to MandaloreGaming, the introduction of "space court" was a considered a controversial move among its community for potentially "casualizing" the game. However, MandaloreGaming believes these concerns are mostly unfounded. There are a lot of other rules and details surrounding the tribunal, but that's the gist.
If you enjoy Among Us because you like to playfully argue, manipulate, and scheme, you'll most likely get a lot out of Unfortunate Spacemen. Though Among Us has been expanding into other platforms, Unfortunate Spacemen is currently only available on PC.