About osu!osu! is a free rhythm game for Windows. It was released in July of 2007. The gameplay is based on other commercial titles including Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, Elite Beat Agents, and Taiko no Tatsujin.
GameplayIt is played by using a mouse to click 'beats' that are displayed on-screen in time with the music.
While playing, you have a health bar at the top of the screen, which drains over time. If the player successfully hits or clears the beat, the health bar fills slightly. However, if the player misses a beat, a part of the meter is drained. If all of the health has been depleted, the player fails the song. There are 3 types of beats in osu!:
Hit circles, sliders, and spinners.Each time the player hits a circle or and end circle, touches a slider tick, or clears a spinner, a combo is displayed on the bottom left of the screen and increases by 1. If he/she/it misses a beat, the combo will return back to 0.
Special GamemodesTaikoThe taiko mode is based on Taiko no Tatsujin, a rhythm game which involves hitting drums to the beat of music. This mode does not require the use of the cursor. Instead, only clicking is required, which can also be done on the keyboard.
When playing in Taiko, red and blue beats, as well as yellow drum rolls (similar to sliders) will scroll across the screen - the player gets more points for the more beats they can hit. To hit red beats, play must hit one of the two Taiko inner hit buttons. For blue, a Taiko Outer hit button must be pressed. Sometimes, large beats will appear, and the player can get more points for hitting both corresponding keys. When a long beat passes, player should tap the rhythm order to earn points. When a spinner appears, they must alternate hitting the inner and outer hit buttons.
Catch the BeatThis mode has the player control a character holding a plate above their head. The objective is to catch fruits falling from the top of the screen. (They fall to the beat.) Sliders have one fruit at each end of the slider, and a trail of juice drops leading between the two ends. Spinners become fruit falling en masse from the top of the screen; the player does not need to catch all the fruit, but the more fruit he/she catches, the more points they will receive.
BeatmapsThe game uses player-made "beatmaps", which are .osu files that contain the actual gameplay data. These beatmaps can be created using the in-game editor, which allows the user to pick
any song they like and create beats for it. The game can only use .mp3 files, so any of those will do.
These beatmaps can be shared via the in-game uploader. Moderators will then comment and give feedback to the beatmaps. After the player modifies the beatmap according to tips given, and the moderators are happy with it, they will approve it for ranking. These "ranks" are statistics on the maps that are displayed on the osu! website.
Players can play ranked beatmaps, and their score will determine the player's ranking in the community amongst others who have played the beatmap.
MultiplayerOn June 8, 2008, multiplayer was added to osu!. It consists of a central lobby that displays rooms that are available, and current online players. A multiplayer game is made the same as a single-player game, but with an in-game scoreboard displaying the ranking of the players in the room. All game-modes (including Taiko and CTB) are available in multiplayer. There are also other modes of multiplayer including tag co-op, and Tag Team mode.
DownloadWikiBeatmaps