Mimic PREVIEW: Among Us Meets Alien Isolation in This Intense Multiplayer Horror

The solo developer of Mimic has had quite the week at Gamescom, having his equipment stolen by thieves, leaving him without a booth to show off to the media. Before that tragic event, I was fortunate enough to get hands-on with Mimic for around 30 minutes as a solo player in a multiplayer game… But we’ll get into that in a minute.

First, I want to make it clear that the recent events involving Ryan Laley, the solo developer behind Mimic, haven’t influenced my opinion in this preview in any way. It’s simply a good game with a fantastic concept, but how it was developed is even more fascinating, which made recent events even more brutal for the developer.

Again, Laley is a solo developer. A solo developer making a game with up to 10 players. That presents its own challenges for testing. Laley spent most of his development time with two laptops, or sometimes a laptop and a Steam Deck, testing out the game’s core multiplayer mechanics. He’d load the game on both devices, test a certain aspect, leave the game, and then fix the bugs. It’s an interesting challenge that, naively, I never really considered, but it provides additional context as to why recent events are even more devastating for Laley.

Mimic Hands-On Gameplay

It was an impromptu hands-on with Mimic at Gamescom as I was just about to grab a beer at one of the many after-parties. Upon checking myself in at the party for what would be a nice, chilled beer, I saw what genuinely was the coolest business card I’ve ever seen. It was of Mimic, a card that used lenticular printing and would change from two characters and the mimic in the middle if you moved it around.

Laley introduced me to Mimic, an up-to 10-player multiplayer horror game. The catch? I had to just run around solo. It wasn’t a horrible experience by any means, as Laley walked me through the game and its mechanics.

In each round, players are assigned a secret role (think Among Us): the crew, the agent, or the mimic. The Crew needs to repair the ship’s systems to escape, the Agent must sabotage the mission to ensure that the Mimic lives, and the Mimic, well, the Mimic must kill everyone.

The Mimic just looks like a crewmate, but will change form into an alien-type monster that can kill and devour players to get new abilities. But that’s not all; the map also has an NPC android that hunts players down to find the Mimic. Players can band together to accuse a player of being the Mimic, and the android will hunt them down.

While I didn’t get to play the multiplayer aspect of a multiplayer game… I did understand what Laley is doing with Mimic, and honestly, it’s a great idea. It feels like it will be a more mature version of Among Us. It will have proximity chat, Twitch chat integration, private lobbies, affixes and rules, and so on, which are all features that I think can make Mimic a viral hit. It’s going to make for great creator content, and if it can break through to the creators, it will be a big hit.

The game has received some criticism for its graphics, and while I agree it could certainly be better, I prefer good core mechanics and a game that sucks me into the gameplay loop and the atmosphere, which Mimic did… Even playing solo.

You can wishlist Mimic on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2606850/Mimic/

Mimic releases on October 27th, 2026, on Steam in early access!

Leave your thoughts down in the comments below about Mimic and my preview, and join the official Insider Gaming Discord server.

For more of my Gamescom previews, check out my preview of Lunar Strike.