Creating an immersive 3D experience for Among Us fans

Innersloth launched the Among Us franchise in 2018. The original title, an online multiplayer social deduction game, shipped on multiple platforms with cross-platform play. The studio then enlisted Schell Games in 2022 to help bring Among Us VR to virtual reality platforms.

The studios have partnered up again and, on May 6, they’re releasing Among Us 3D on PC and VR platforms. In this party game, players will get to experience all of the same teamwork and deception in space, but now in 3D. Crewmates work together to complete tasks before Impostors descend upon them and kill everyone aboard. The game offers an up close and personal experience for players to immerse themselves in venting, Emergency Meetings, and above all else, sabotage.

We sat down with Ryan Hall, project director of Among Us 3D and senior designer at Schell Games, and William Roberts, engineering director of Among Us 3D and principal engineer for Schell Games, to discuss how they expanded the title and built engaging player experiences on both PC and VR platforms.

Let’s start from conception. How did this project come about?

Ryan Hall: After launching Among Us VR back in 2022, we’ve been steadily releasing content updates. Over time, our relationship with Innersloth really grew and prospered, and we started asking ourselves, “What else can we do with this? Who else can we reach?” with all the work we already put into the VR version. We were thrilled Innersloth agreed that it would be a great idea to bring the game to PC players.

How does Among Us 3D stand out from the original Among Us and Among Us VR?

Ryan: One of the main differences between Among Us and Among Us VR has always been the perspective. It’s a different kind of thrill to get snuck up on when you can only see what’s in front of you.

That same feeling, already very visceral in VR, translates really well to the 3D first-person perspective. It’s more claustrophobic, a little spookier.

Also, with PC, you get what you’d expect from a first-person experience: more HUD information, on-screen controls, etc. It really feels like a modern first-person game, except that you’re still just a Bean.

When you began developing the game, what was the end goal?

Ryan: The goal was always to expand the title. We already had Among Us VR that is enjoyed by tens of thousands of players. We wanted to bring that experience to more folks, especially on PC, while also enhancing the number of players VR users could play with.

PC is a different platform, and we wanted to bring a performant, immersive experience that allowed VR and PC gamers to play together without one having an advantage over the other.

Schell Games uses pillars to serve as the north star for the entire project throughout development. Were the development pillars for Among Us 3D different from Among Us VR?

Ryan: Yes, we needed new ones. One of the most important pillars was ensuring that players across platforms had a seamless experience. It shouldn’t feel strange to play with someone on a different device, and neither side should have an advantage. We revisited every interaction and UI element with that mindset.

We wanted to continue to build an experience that was dynamic and industry-leading in VR while also including 3D players. Our goal was also to keep the experience as smooth as possible. This led us to consider every interaction, movement, and screen in the game and ask ourselves “must this change?” and “how should it change?”

How did you set out to achieve this?

Ryan: We started with a top-to-bottom assessment of the player experience and where a 3D experience might differ from VR. One of the most obvious differences is input. VR typically uses handheld motion controllers, while PC players use mouse and keyboard or controllers.

William Roberts: Right. And before we even began development on Among Us 3D, we had already built a set of 3D tools within our engine. These let us simulate the VR experience without a headset, which sped up iteration and revealed interaction pain points, like gestures and task interactions, that we’d need to refine for PC.

Ryan: Because of those differences, we created a gesture system specifically for PCs. VR players naturally express themselves with hand movements, but PC players would’ve lost that expressiveness.

Now, PC players can gesture too. It makes it easier to point at a vent someone just crawled into, call people out in meetings, or give someone a suspicious thumbs-up to hide your evil intentions.

What key elements did you focus on?

Ryan: In addition to the gesture system, the UI, for sure. It might not be the flashiest topic, but we had to completely rework it. VR UIs can be distracting or even nauseating if they’re not done right. So we moved everything to screen space instead of mounting it to a VR camera.

William: We also found that things like pulling levers or interacting with switches didn’t feel great with a mouse and keyboard. We spent a lot of time refining these elements so PC players playing the 3D game would have a very similar experience to what VR players have. We had to rework a lot of those interactions to feel just as intuitive and satisfying on PC.

Ryan: You get the added benefit of making things feel a little more “wonky” like the brand suggests. Instead of hitting a number key, you’re moving your little fingers to press buttons one by one. That wouldn’t have come naturally if we started with the PC first, we got there because of the VR-first evolution.

What is Tag Mode?

Ryan: Tag Mode is a high-energy, action-oriented twist on classic Among Us gameplay. Two players start as “infected” and their goal is to tag Crewmates. When they do, that player also becomes infected. The round becomes a race between infected players and Crewmates.

Crewmates can still complete tasks to earn power-ups, which help them evade infected players. If they complete enough tasks, a number you can set, they win. It’s a permanent mode in Among Us 3D, just like Hide-and-Seek is in the original Among Us.

We still have a huge bank of match settings that players can tweak like lighting, kill cooldowns, impostor count, and more. If you want chaos, you can absolutely make it happen.

What was the biggest technical challenge the team faced?

William: Introducing the new store and currency system. We needed the store to retain all previously purchased items while also letting new players buy DLC items individually. It had to be seamless for the user but incredibly flexible on the backend. We had some great partners throughout that process and we couldn’t have done it alone.

How does the in-game currency work?

Ryan: Stardust is our new in-game currency. It allows us to post Stardust packages on platform storefronts so it’s the only thing players need to purchase externally.

Once in the game, players can browse all cosmetics without requiring bundles. We can now offer individual items, which is great for players who just want that one perfect hat without buying a whole pack.

What was the main challenge experienced while building the game for multiple platforms?

William: Understanding the requirements from different third-party vendors. Every platform has its own rules for stores, currencies, achievements, friend notifications, and more. We had to do a ton of preproduction research and have early conversations to get a handle on all of it.

We wanted to have a firm understanding of all the different requirements before we started 3D development. The research we put in ahead of time allowed us to ramp up the team and efficiently get new teammates up to speed to start working on the game’s core development.

What steps did you take to optimize the game for multiple platforms?

William: We’ve been slowly adding more and more platforms over time, which gave us a chance to fine-tune for each as they came online.

With Among Us 3D, we already had a strong minimum spec from the lower-end VR hardware we support. Oftentimes, VR devices have very high specs to support the rendering of VR environments. So optimizing for low-spec PCs was easier than expected.

Schell Games has been working in Unity for years. Was the team’s process similar to prior games or did they take a different approach?

William: We brought in a lot of practices from previous VR projects Schell Games has worked on, like the I Expect You To Die franchise and Until You Fall. There are in-house tools we’ve built and used across multiple games, including Among Us 3D. For example, our task system in the game uses a lot of the same tech we built out for I Expect You To Die. Developers at the studio are familiar with the tech from other projects, so it makes it much easier for them to come on to the project.

What Unity tools and features did the team use most frequently?

William: Unity’s Profiler, Frame Debugger, and Editor Scripting were crucial. We’ve built a lot of custom Editor tools to set up the tasks and interactions you see in the game.

When we have special events, there is an Editor script that makes it easy to set up all the gameplay data. We use the Unity Profiler and Frame Debugger on a near daily basis to set break points in our code or look at performance metrics.

What was the biggest lesson the team learned throughout development?

Ryan: When you’re working on multiple platforms, you have to appreciate the differences between each platform. Small approaches will add up quickly and create much larger overheads. No matter how similar they are in terms of end user experience, the devil’s in the details and you need to always leave enough buffer time on your schedule to handle the little one-off issues that could prevent launch entirely on a specific platform.

William: Designate someone to own platform knowledge. Those details can easily slip through the cracks and become major blockers once you start going through the certification process.

What is your top tip for developers looking to bring an immersive VR experience to PC screens?

Ryan: Don’t be afraid to embrace what made your VR experience great. Find ways to translate it rather than cutting features. There’s always a solution when you may feel like there’s a gap between the two experiences. So, try to take an approach where you’re building on the success of your VR experience when you’re reimagining it for PC screens. The more consistent you can keep the feel between platforms, the less you’re maintaining two separate games. That effort up front will pay off when you scale or update later.

What is your big wish for players jumping into Among Us 3D?

Ryan: That they have a ton of fun and that it gives our VR fans a great excuse to pull in friends who don’t have VR gear.

William: Same here. This game is all about playing with friends and meeting people, and we’re excited to open the door to even more players. We look forward to a new crowd of people being able to hang out and enjoy debating over who killed who.

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