Game Review: Osu!

Osu! (2007) is a music video game for PC in which the player hits circles on the screen to the rhythm of a song. A successful “hit” action is accomplished by both positioning the mouse at the location of a circle and clicking the circle on the right beat. Users design the progression of circles to match the rhythm and beat of a song, and the entirety of this progression for a song or portion of a song is called a beatmap. As the name suggests, the process of designing the positioning and timing of notes for a song is a geographical as well as musical exercise. The title of the game comes from a Japanese term used in karate. “Osu!” is used in Japanese martial arts to mean “yes,” “hello,” “goodbye,” and a few other affirmative terms.

Osu! provides a method of interacting with music that simply listening does not. The act of clicking in perfect synchrony with your favorite song is a way of demonstrating that a player can conduct careful observation to understand the music. For example, in many Osu! beatmaps the notes transition from following the tempo of a song’s base to following the rhythm of the melody or supporting instruments. These transitions essentially require the player to actively pay attention to a song’s individual components if they wish to successfully complete a beatmap. As a result, Osu! players can develop fairly good skills in musical awareness.

However, playing music in Osu! is of course different from playing music with proper instruments in a few key ways. The system of “music reading” employed by the game is not a linear one as in sheet music, but rather a temporal one: instead of reading notes left to right as a song progresses, in Osu! the passage of time reveals future notes just a few moments before they need to be played. Furthermore, music reading in Osu! requires a unique spatial element. Though the location of notes on the screen does not itself impact how they sound or should be played, the way a beatmap designer arranges notes over the course of a song can create various affective experiences for the player.

Triple sixteenth notes (occasionally with the third being a slider) are common in Osu!. The game allows the player to select two keys as “hit” keys, making these notes playable by triple tapping across two keys. These triple eighth notes, especially when employed by beatmap designers in quick succession, provide the player with a feeling of haste—but usually controlled haste, since the player must keep tempo and refrain from hitting the notes too quickly. Contrastingly, another technique used by beatmappers is to spread single eighth notes across the entire screen for multiple beats, and these segments of a beatmap elicit feelings of anxiety and extreme precarity from the player because they must maintain both the tempo of the notes and constant movement of the mouse.

By designing beatmaps in these ways, beatmappers contribute to the creative process of musical artists by interpreting the affective response that a song elicits and conveying it to the player. On the flipside, the player is also involved in the creative process in a similar way as the orchestral musician who, receiving a tailored score from the conductor, plays an old piece of music in an original fashion. I’m not claiming that Osu! has the complexity, rigor, and intensity of professional musicianship, but I do see key similarities and differences between the way music is played in both mediums.

However, beyond presenting a unique type of music reading, playing, and interpreting, Osu! has another key distinguishing feature: it’s community. There are plenty other games which fall under the category of rhythm games: Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and Just Dance to name a few. These games usually come pre-installed with songs for players to play, and there is not much room for expansion. Osu! on the other hand continues to function as a now 11-year-old game because its playerbase is constantly making new beatmaps for people to play. The overwhelming expanse of songs to choose from means no two players’ song directories are the same (usually), and players can go to Osu!’s website and search beatmaps for their favorite songs as they wish.

Yet the best way to discover new beatmaps is in multiplayer. Osu! allows players to create their own multiplayer lobbies in which they can play with anyone in the world, no player-side servers required. The standard social protocol in these lobbies is host rotation: a process by which every player takes a turn selecting a beatmap to play. This creates vast opportunity for song sharing and collective skill improvement that is easy to access. Accessibility is a key distinguishing factor in Osu! from other types of group musicianship: Osu! itself is free and requires little processing power. In the face of musical organizations which might not only have high participation costs but also might not exist everywhere, Osu! provides a less expensive and more easily community-based alternative for musical practice. Furthermore, the skill cap for Osu! is fairly high, so most players do not get bored of the game's mechanical difficulty in a short time.

In contrast to other multiplayer communities, such as those infamously present in FPS games, the general Osu! community is largely friendly, possibly since most players play Osu! as a casual rather than competitive game. Whether in casual discussions about music preferences or tangential conversations on tasty Brazilian foods, Osu! has provided me and many other players with alternatives to the flow of everyday life for brief and simple music enjoyment in an explorative and collaborative environment.

If you play or are interested in playing, send me a message! :) Needless to say, I have very fond feelings for this game.