Among Us

So I caved to playing another fad game, this time it being Among Us. It's always a bit pointless giving my opinion on these games, because everybody is already playing it, or decided they really don't want to, but what can I do. I play it - I talk about it, those are the rules.

So, Among Us is a social game for up to 10 people, 1-3 of whom are impostors and must work together to kill the remaining players without being found out. Meanwhile the crewmates (non-impostors) win if they either figure and vote out the impostors, or complete all their tasks. The latter being more of a time-constraint for the impostors.
There is little to do as a crewmate, other than your tasks and keeping an eye on what others are doing. There are a few helpful appliances like cameras that monitor a select few small areas, or vitals, which show the alive-state of everyone. The crew can not actively fight back. The impostor however has a cooldown on his kill, leaves behind very obvious bodies, can use vents which connect parts of the map to teleport, and cause malfunctions like doors to close, or lights to go out. If a body is found or someone manually calls a meeting, everyone is allowed to communicate for that period of time, and potentially vote somebody out.

The very first thing I noticed as I entered the game was how low quality it was. The level of art and especially UI quality was something out of a game jam game. It baffled me that such a thing amassed so much popularity, and has been around for two years. But, okay, it's never about the art, but the gameplay, right. That said, I can't give its gameplay a much higher rating. The game is shallow. It requires very little learning and you'll see everything you can do in just a couple of games on each map. It doesn't require much mechanical skill (basically none as a crewmate, while the impostor has to juggle more things), so aside from getting better at tricking people, you can't really get good at the game. And it has strategies from the crewmate side that can most probably guarantee a win, so you just got to agree not to use them. It's less about playing the game, more about screaming at and laughing with your friends.
Mind you, this is all from the perspective of playing with a group of trustable people over Discord. I can not imagine playing with randoms. It is so easy to cheat or abuse the game. It takes just one person to mess up the game for others. I also wouldn't want to be typing into chat, as the game has no built-in voice either. Playing with random people would just be a terrible experience.

Would I recommend it? Well, the answer would be clear were I not still regularly playing it. I want to very clearly state that I don't think it's a good game. It's pretty bad on most fronts. However, they hit that sweet spot for a game that friend groups can play together, and, like for pretty much all games that got popular fast, people swayed their friends to join them to play it. Missing a player for today's session? Ask all the players to ask all their friends. And instantly, just because somebody leaves, like 20 more get notified on it. So as a final verdict, if your friend group wants you to join them playing this, and you like just hanging out with them... Sure, go play some Among Us. But try not to be the one looking for a game. If you're lucky enough to not have friends playing this, join them in their other activities instead, or if you're alone anyways, play something else.