Gameplay and features
There are four official game modes: "osu!" (called "osu!standard"), "osu!taiko", "osu!catch", and "osu!mania".[8][9] The original osu!standard mode remains the most popular to date and as of March 2022, the game has over 19.3 million monthly active users according to the game's global country leaderboards.[10]
Each mode offers a variety of "beatmaps", which are game levels that are played to songs of different lengths, ranging from "TV size" anime openings to "marathons" surpassing 7 minutes. In osu!standard, beatmaps consist of three items – hit circles, sliders, and spinners. The goal of the game is for the player to click on these items in time to the music. These items are collectively known as "hit objects" or "circles", and are arranged in different positions on the screen (except for the spinner) at different points of time during a song. Taiko beatmaps have drumbeats and spinners. Catch beatmaps have fruits and spinners, which are arranged in a horizontally falling manner. Mania beatmaps consist of keys (depicted as a small bar) and holds. The beatmap is then played with accompanying music, simulating a sense of rhythm as the player interacts with the objects to the beat of the music.[11][12] Each beatmap is accompanied by music and a background. The game can be played using various peripherals: the most common setup is a graphics tablet or computer mouse to control cursor movement, paired with a keyboard[13][7] or a mini keyboard with only two keys, and only the keyboard for osu!taiko, osu!catch, and osu!mania beatmaps.
The game offers a buyable service called osu!supporter, which grants extra features to the user.[14] osu!supporter does not affect the ranking system, or provide any in-game advantage. While osu!supporter itself is not a recurring service (meaning it is a one-off payment), it has a limited time validity ranging from 1 month to 2 years; however, multiple purchases of osu!supporter service time can be entitled to one user, allowing for longer uninterrupted service.
Community and competitive play
Community events
refer to caption
An audience watches players idke and RyuK compete at the Osu! TwitchCon booth in 2018.
Osu! and its players have organized different events, such as fanart and beatmapping contests, and conventions. The biggest unofficial event held in the community is "cavoe's osu! event"[15] (usually referred to as "osu! event" or "COE"), held at The Brabanthallen[16] in 's Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. The event has been arranged three times since 2017 yearly. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 and 2021 editions of the event were cancelled. COE 2022, the most recent event, took place from 1 to 7 August. There were also official stands at TwitchCon and Anime Expo.[non-primary source needed]
Tournaments
Osu! contains three main facets of competition between players. In multiplayer lobbies, up to 16 users play a map simultaneously. On individual maps, players compete for highscores on global leaderboards or against highscores set by themselves and friends. Players also compete with their ranks, which are calculated by accumulating "performance points" (pp). pp is based on a map's difficulty and the player's performance on it.[17] In July 2019, a player, Vaxei, exceeded 1,000pp in a single play for the first time, followed by another player, idke, less than twenty-four hours later.[18][19]
Starting in 2011, there have been twelve annual Osu! World Cups (usually abbreviated as OWC), one for each game mode (osu!mania having two for four key and seven key). Teams for World Cups are country-based, with up to eight players per team.[20] There are also very many different community-hosted tournaments, differing in rank range, types of maps played, and how the teams are composed.[21] Winners of larger official tournaments typically receive prizes such as cash, merchandise, profile badges and/or osu!supporter subscriptions. For this reason, large tournaments often attract high skill level players as well as large audiences on Twitch, this is in contrast to the smaller community tournaments which often have small or no prizes and are not watched by many people. These smaller tournaments comprise the vast majority of all Osu! tournaments, and through the usage of global rank entry restrictions where you may only compete against players in your own rank range, community tournaments provide a serious competitive environment for players who may not be highly skilled. Without these community tournaments, players would have to practice for years to have any shot at serious competitive play.