Among Us Story: On Guard [Preview] – Knives out

Never underestimate the power of coffee in space

At Nintendo’s Switch 2 area of Summer Game Fest, I was able to go hands-on with the next Among Us game, Among Us Story: On Guard. The series is branching out into other media ,like a successful animated show debuting on Paramount+, and now a spin-off game. After some time with it, though, it feels less of a spin-off and more of a lore-heavy enjoyable jaunt into the space bean universe that we’ve come to know for nearly a decade, lending life to the characters that have up until now been made of flat colors wearing silly hats.

The opening moments of On Guard look like a regular game of Among Us, right down to the familiar visual style. Its whole goal however is to pitch a virtual, almost timeshare experience to our hero. Conned into putting on a VR headset, we’re quickly sent onto a space ship and things start to go sideways.

The game differentiates this virtual world from the regular Among Us by switching up the aesthetics. It’s almost papercraft-like, letting us know that this is a slightly different place than where we just were, and yet it’s still friendly and comfortable. The title of the game is On Guard, and so the Guard is who we are. All of the names of our crew mates seem to have role-based monikers: Doctor, Engineer, Cook, Captain. As soon as we get there and start getting to work, uh, guarding, a murder takes place and we’re framed as the imposter. We’re the new guy, so it’s obviously us, right? We’re taken to the airlock and about to be shot off into space when a twist of fate occurs, we get lucky, and manage to escape through the vent.

The game playing in this new art style gives the developers options for how to approach different situations, because even though moving around the ship is very much in the familiar Among Us vantage point, heading into places like the vents drops us into a first person view, with endless gray walls and hopefully an escape vent (once in a while). It can seem easy to get lost, but early in the game there are only one or two accessible vents, so we can’t really get too lost.

Obviously (?) we’re innocent, so the quest begins to prove just that, staying hidden from sight while we look for clues. We need to do specific things like find the body, avoid detection and sniff out the real imposter. This is often done in the series’ style of minigames, where puzzles and timing combine. In one area that involves swiping a keycard in a door, which takes a few tries depending on how slow or fast we tap the trigger. We need to find out how to get into a blocked area, so the vents become pivotal — but without a map we won’t know where to go in the labyrinth. To remedy that I have to find the vent-dwelling Engineer, and to do THAT I need to short the electrical systems to draw him out. But how?

Coffee. Coffee can do it. Off to the kitchen I go, playing a minigame where I place a cup in a coffee machine, grabbing and dropping beans in the grinder at the top until the cup fills up. Once we have that delicious brew we can take it to the electrical board and spill it, causing the Engineer to pop out from the nearby vent. Once he sees us, though, he’s petrified. We ARE the accused crewmate, after all. He starts to run and we give chase, and if we misjudge his speed and path (like I did!) then he’ll get away and we have to do the whole process again. Once we do manage to get a hold of him we’re able to convince him of our plan, get the map, and head back into the vents onto the next section.

The puzzles aren’t too difficult in the game, as they’re clearly designed for the demographic who love Among Us for what it actually is, a smart and accessible hidden identity game. On Guard dons that same hat of accessibility, giving us puzzles that take at most a couple of tries and always quick enough to not frustrate.

It helps that the game is charming, as even the babbling of the characters’ voices all have different tones and types that befit their personalities, and the writing and interactions come off genuinely funny. Among Us: On Guard still feels like Among Us, which is the most important part of the entire experience. The developers have managed to add a narrative that lets us feel like we’re still in that original game, albeit now with a little more purpose and a lot more whimsy.

This preview was based on a session on Nintendo Switch 2 at Summer Game Fest 2026.