History
On August 8, 2019, Innersloth added a new second map, Mira HQ! Eventually, a third map came later that year on November 12 being Polus. These maps were originally paid DLC, being US$4. These prices were reduced to US$2 on January 6, 2020. These were still too much so they made it free on June 11, 2020. Forest Willard, the programmer of Innersloth, said the team stuck with the game a lot longer than they should have from a pure business standpoint.
Inspiration
Among Us was originally inspired by Mafia, the live party game. Originally, it was under the code name of "spacemafia".
Growing
Innersloth was thinking that it would be a small local multiplayer game with one map to play at parties. Since you would play with people around you they made they game so there would be little to no sound. After the release of the game, the concurrent players averaged at about 30-50. Marcus Bromander, also known as Puffballs United, creator of the Henry Stickmin series, thought that Among Us wasn't doing well due to eing "really bad at marketing." Innersloth actually almost dropped Among Us multiple times! They only kept it going because they had a "small but vocal player base." They added new stuff including online multiplayer, new tasks, and customizable options. Then they made a big decision to release the game to Steam on November 16, 2018.
Growth in Popularity
Even though Among Us released in 2018, it grew in popularity in 2020. Willard says that the person to popularize Among Us was the Twitch streamer Sodapoppin (which I will link in the Twitch streamers tab) and eventually big Twitch streamers started playing like Disguised Toast(my favorite), Pewdiepie, Ninja, and Pokimane. Other's say that the release of The Henry Stickmin Collection popularized Among Us. The team at Innersloth began working of ideas for their Among Us 2 but as Among Us began to grow and grow, they decided to drop Among Us 2 and slowly started adding on the things they would've implemented in Among Us 2 into Among Us.