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Monthly Beatmapping Contest: January 2025

by pishifat, Hivie, Morusya

Only one thing stands between you and proof that you're a good mapper: the Monthly Beatmapping Contest.

In case you're unaware, the Monthly Beatmapping Contest (MBC) is a beatmapping contest that's held monthly. Big surprise, we know.

This month's iteration is for osu!taiko and osu!catch mappers:

This article covers results from the last contest, plus criteria for this contest. Skip around with these links:

Results for November's MBC
- osu!taiko results
- osu!catch results
Criteria for this month's MBC

See the full results here.

Summary

Placement	Users	Beatmap	Badge prize	Title prize	Contest points
Winner	-Kazuha	Raphiiel - RoquiRa : Between Life and Death		Elite Mapper	+2 (7 total)
Winner	Doug	Raphiiel - RoquiRa : Between Life and Death		-	+2 (2 total)
Runner-up	uone	BilliumMoto x Akiri - Cryochemistry		-	+1 (9 total)
Runner-up	tasuke912	BilliumMoto x Akiri - Cryochemistry	-	-	+1 (3 total)

-Kazuha and Doug produced a monster of a 10-minute marathon beatmap together, landing -Kazuha a spot in osu!'s Elite Mappers. Meanwhile, tasuke912 and veteran Elite Mapper uone came in a close 2nd with their own 6-minute marathon.

Special thanks to arcpotato, BlackBN, SimplySynthy, and Yasuho for judging this month's maps!

See the full results here.

Summary

Placement	User	Beatmap	Badge prize	Title prize	Contest points
Winner	Jemzuu	seatrus - Hekikuu no Yakusoku		Elite Mapper	+2 (6 total)
Runner-up	Mniam	Akiri - Leuenea	-	-	+1 (1 total)

Yet another seatrus submission pushed Jemzuu over the top and into osu!catch's Elite Mappers! Congratulations to him.

And thanks to this month's judges: fayew, Unlucky_w, Chatie, and -Rustyy!

This month's contest is open to osu!taiko and osu!catch mappers.

Beatmapping (3 weeks): Contest is announced and beatmappers create their entries.
Screening (1.5 weeks): Entries are evaluated by experienced beatmappers. If there aren't many entries, this will be skipped in favour of a longer judging period.
Judging (1.5 weeks): Top entries from screening are judged in detail by a different crew of experienced beatmappers.
Rewards (~2 months from now): Winners are announced at the start of another MBC.

Limitations are a staple of the Monthly Beatmapping Contest. These are essentially extra rules that make each month's contest (and its submitted maps) distinct!

If you're confused about how these work, ask for clarification in the comments, or send a message to Hivie (for osu!taiko) or Morusya (for osu!catch).

Finishers are already big, but this contest aims to give them even more of a focus.

This month's osu!taiko theme is finishers.

Finishers should be used liberally, and in the judging phase, maps will be evaluated on how well finishers are used in pretty much every aspect (along with the usual mapping quality–related criteria). This includes finisher creativity, finisher playability, finishers in regards to map quality, and... you get the idea.

Difficulty settings are the basis of any map. This month's contest aims to change how you use these values.

This month's osu!catch limitation: all difficulty settings must be equal.

Circle size, approach rate, overall difficulty, and HP drain are the relevant settings in this case. Each of these must be the same value!

Any song listed on osu!'s Featured Artist listing is eligible for this contest. Cutting songs is allowed too!

The Monthly Beatmapping Contest rewards users with contest points based on their placements:

Winner: 2 points
Runner-up: 1 point

Contest points reward users at certain thresholds:

Profile badges are attainable at 2, 4, and 6 points each. The badges are tiered, meaning each new badge will replace the previous one!
Elite Mapper user title is attainable at 6 points.

Additionally, a Mappers' Guild keychain is optionally rewarded to the winner of each month's contest. Its design is based on your beatmap!

Submissions must follow the month's beatmapping limitation:
- osu!taiko: create a map based around finishers
- osu!catch: all difficulty settings must be equal
Submissions must be a single difficulty from one of the month's selected songs.
Submissions must be in .osz format.
Submissions must NOT be uploaded to the osu! website until after the contest's results are finalised.
Submissions must abide by the ranking criteria.
Submissions must be solely made by you. Collaborations are not allowed for this contest!