Among Us’ new map, The Airship, coming March 31

Among Us’ new map, The Airship, will be released on March 31, developer InnerSloth announced Thursday. The new map was originally revealed in December, and will arrive as part of a free update that adds ladders, a basic account system for moderation, and the “ability to pick the room you start in,” the developer said.

Of course, there are also some new hats. Among Us launched in 2018 with a single map, with two other maps added over the years, making Airship the game’s fourth playable map.

The game, however, absolutely blew up in 2020 — and the success caught the developer off guard, it said in its latest update.

“I explained this a bit in our last dev log, but Among Us’ popularity was something no one expected, and quite late into 2020 too,” the developer wrote in the update. “We had already considered the game done and had moved onto something else.”

And so creating the new map took time — which is normal in game development — as the team started work again on Among Us, while dealing with the game’s newfound massive popularity. In Thursday’s update, InnerSloth went over the details of the challenges that came up during Among Us’ huge year, including maintenance, hiring, and a whole bunch of meetings.

“Additionally, creating a map and updates isn’t as simple as creating one aspect of the game and throwing it onto the PC. Because our game is cross-platform, it means EVERYTHING needs to work on as many devices as possible,” InnerSloth said. “You may have noticed most modifications to the game focus on just PC, as that makes development much easier.”

It’s clear, though, that fans are excited to see new content in Among Us, even years into the game’s lifespan. Within minutes, the tweet that announced the map’s release date has amassed thousands of retweets, comments, and likes. The game’s major success during the pandemic certainly has something to do with that — over the past year, everyone’s played Among Us, even politicians.