After Fortnite Season 4 successfully came to a close, Epic Games wasted no time in releasing Season 5 along with teasers and hints for upcoming crossover characters. While Season 4 was themed completely around the Marvel universe, it appears that Epic Games has decided on focusing on bounty hunters for Season 5.
From what we’ve seen so far, the theme for this newest season will mix together a bunch of outside characters and then incorporate them into Fortnite itself. As a matter of fact, iconic characters from popular franchises have already been confirmed for Season 5, including The Mandalorian and The Walking Dead’s Daryl and Michonne.
Now, it appears that Fortnite Season 5 will be incorporating more than just characters, but it will be taking inspiration from other titles as well. To be more specific, a new Fortnite game mode plays very similarly to the popular social deduction game Among Us.
The new limited-time game mode called “The Spy Within,” which went live along with the recent update, has players trying to identify who the double-crossing spies are. Just like in a game of Among Us, the Fortnite agents have to successfully do a variety of tasks and earn coins along the way before the spies stealthily eliminate all of them.
Of course, InnerSloth’s Among Us isn’t the founder of social deduction games. There are numerous titles out there that utilize this genre, such as Gnosia and the Werewolf/Mafia party game by Dimitry Davidoff in 1986. However, Among Us is probably one of the most popular hidden identity games right now, which should count for something.
In addition, there are notable similarities that pinpoint to Among Us in particular. First and foremost, players have the option to summon a meeting in The Spy Within if or when they notice that another player is acting suspicious. During a meeting, players get to discuss with one another about who they think is the spy and once a conclusion has been made, they vote the player out.
Not only that, The Spy Within consists of a maximum of ten agents with two traitorous spies among them. Similarly, Among Us’ maximum lobby also caps at ten players.
A major difference between the two titles, however, is the fact that The Spy Within utilizes voice proximity chat in-game. This is definitely a much-appreciated feature, as many Among Us players have complained about how tiring it is to keep typing on a keyboard in order to communicate in a public lobby.
Fortnite’s new game mode also offers players a couple of exclusive prizes, such as a new glider, a holiday-themed weapon skin, as well as a skateboard that has spy-inspired designs on it.
That being said, the game mode is expected to be dynamic because it’s supposed to shuffle every few days to showcase a brand-new game variant by the different members of the community, including Snownymous, KKSlider, Blanky, DolphinDom, Wert, Bunni_, MackJack, and Ritual.
In any case, it’s hard to tell if The Spy Within will entice dedicated Among Us fans to sign up and join Fortnite for this game mode — that is if this was Epic Games’ plan all along. That said, the new game mode looks interesting enough to try out, so we hope that fans will enjoy it and what it has to offer.
