Indie gaming: osu!

The Rhythm genre, made extremely popular with Konami’s Beatmania, Guitar Freaks, and of course Dance Dance Revolution, has always been an addicting one in my mind.  As a talanted musician-in-limbo I have always dug these types of games, although that mainly pertains to Guitar Hero/Rock Band.

At the same time, however, Nintendo and Inis put rhythm to the stylus with the Japanese hit Osu! Tatake! Ouendan!, which sees players tapping hit circles and dragging across sliders to music as they appear on the screen.  Over here, that became Elite Beat Agents with its exclusive 15 song library of popular western hits spanning the past 20 or so years.

For some people, though, EBA was not enough. Although Japan has a Ouendan 2 and there’s currently no word of a similar American sequel, one Australian stepped up to the plate with his own answer: Osu!

Osu!

Osu! is pegged as a “Ouendan simulator.” The gameplay is exactly the same in a sense, except that the vast majority of users will be playing this game with their mouse and keyboard. (Unless they have a tabletPC or a monitor with touchscreen support.)  This in some way adds to the difficulty of Ouendan’s original concept, if not for the fact that a lot of the harder beatmaps that are conceived by its large userbase can be much MUCH harder than the harder difficulties on EBA. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this:

Only the #1 player could do something like that.

Osu! song select

Every single song, or “beatmaps” as they’re called, are made by community members.  The highest quality beatmaps become “ranked” meaning that scores are registered and count towards your overall rank.  The community highly encourages creating and helping others with their own beatmaps to get as many ranked as possible. (Fortunately, no one has come around with a copyright infringement notice yet.)  Because of this, Osu! contains songs from many different eras and cultures, though most either seem to come from video games, J-pop, or internet memes.

Osu! gameplay

Al l the elements that make up Ouendan games can be used to make a full beatmap. Sliders can be made of any shape and length and storyboarding options allow people to create scenes that mimic those that you would find in a Ouendan or EBA game as well. (Although it’s not fairly used.) In-game, the game keeps track of your accuracy and overall score, in which the game assigns you a rank depending on how well your performance is.  Mods can be used to make the game easier (such as No Fail or Half Time) or harder (Hidden, Double Time, Hard Rock, Sudden Death, and Flashlight) and will affect your score depending on what you have selected, so even after you’ve mastered a beatmap you can always go back and try for a higher score with a bigger challenge.

Osu! ranking screen

Osu! is a fully functional online game as well. Along with the ranking system, the game also includes multiplayer mods for both competitive and co-operative play, much like the games it was inspired by.  Players can chat in-game with others, and also doubles as an IRC server so players can also chat with those that are outside of the game.  In addition, online functions can be used by people to collaborate on a single beatmap or to help another user fix a problem with their own beatmap as well.  Osu! is also fully skinnable, with skins being made based on other themes. (Such as “Osu! Ends With You”, which is the skin you’re seeing in my screenshots.)

Osu! Taiko Mode

Other mods have also been introduced to Osu! over time, such as Taiko mode (a replication of the arcade game of the same name) and an exclusive game mode called “Catch the Beat”, which has the player catching fruits in time with the song’s rhythm.  Both game modes are designed to use a song’s standard beatmap and modify it for the proper game mode, meaning you don’t have to create seperate maps for all modes.

All in all, if you’re a Ouendan fan, I would highly recommend trying this out.  The possiblities are endless for this game as a clone and it should entertain you, even if Nintendo/Inis never comes out with an EBA2.  Rhythm is only a click away with Osu!

Osu! can be found at http://osu.ppy.sh