With the flicker of lights, you barely see your hand right in front of your face. You skimper across the ship and make your way to what seems to look like a light panel. As you mess around with the switches, the lights suddenly jolt on to reveal a cold, dead body under your feet.

This moment happens all the time in the game, so you would expect it to be a horror and thriller game. But it is actually the exact opposite. Welcome to Among Us, the game that has taken the mainstream world of gaming.

Among Us is a party social deduction game created by InnerSloth. The game takes place in space-related maps from interstellar ships to moon bases. It revolves around a crew of players trying to fix up the base all while there are imposters hidden among them trying to kill every person. The only way to win for the crewmates is to find out who the imposters are or finish their tasks before the imposters take everyone out. With such a fun party game idea, it is no wonder that it became so popular, but the odd part about the game is…it has been out for two whole years!!!!

Among Us came out back in 2018 on June 15. It came out with only one map, The Skeld. In 2019, they added two more maps with Polus and Mira HQ, but still, no one cared about the game. InnerSloth continued to develop the game, patch after patch, and nothing seemed to change when it came to its player base. Even Google Trends shows no one cared about it up until August 2nd, as seen below. So how the heck did this game become popular so suddenly?

The only explanation to give for the miraculous popularization of Among Us has to be twitch. Twitch is a game streaming site that allows people to stream and interact with their viewers. Around August 2nd, some of the biggest streamers like xQc, Gaules, auronplay, Trainwreckstv, Pokimane, and Disguised Toast all began playing the game. With a combined total of 240,000 average viewers, this brought the game to the mainstream gaming community. Even Twitch trends shows this:

So While Among Us brings hours of fun to people all across the world, InnerSloth and all of us should be thankful to Twitch Streamers for bringing this amazing game to the mainstream.