Among Us

Space Mafia cops both the art style and the fundamental mechanics of Among Us, but it manages to be a compelling and good-looking game despite that. And the fundamentals of this game go back further. The core can be found in popular social deception games Werewolf and Mafia, which has players working together to try and eliminate the traitors among them.

Space Mafia takes that core premise and builds upon it with visual representation and a series of tasks that need to be completed. Players move around the map trying to perform different tasks, while the impostors try to sabotage their success and murder them one by one. The majority of players are forced to try and accomplish their goals while being unable to trust anyone around them.

A good game of Space Mafia will live or die on the players involved. Impostors need to be deceptive, but even players who aren't impostors need to be carefully diplomatic or run the risk of the rest of the team turning on them. Regular players will need to be good at reading the scenery for potential tells in other players and to identify any abnormal behavior.

The basics here are simplistic, and Space Mafia executes them well. There's a decent variety of different cosmetics to choose from, and the game is largely absent of obnoxious microtransactions. That said, many will be unable to look past the fact that it's such a blatant impostor of popular game Among Us. It may do a lot of things well, but it can't reliably pass for the real thing.

Pros:

• Solid execution of social deception formula
• Cute characters with decent amount of cosmetics
• Good selection of minigames

Cons:

• Blatantly copies Among Us
• Very limited map selection