osu! is a freeware rhythm game whereby players use a pointing device (such as a mouse or tablet) to manipulate gameplay elements (hit circles, sliders and spinners) in conjunction with the song’s rhythm, scoring points in the process.

Game link: https://osu.ppy.sh/

Gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPw4BdUc9l8

osu! is easy to learn, but difficult to master. The mechanics of osu! are very simple. There are only 3 basic gameplay elements that players need to interact with, namely hit circles, sliders, and spinners.

A hit circle must be clicked on when the ring surrounding it (called an approach ring) just touches the hit circle. If the hit circle is clicked too early (before the approach ring reaches it) or too late, the game will award less points to the player, depending on the difficulty setting. Musicality comes into play because the approach rings are designed to reach the hit circles in sync with the beats of the song being played. Therefore, players need a good sense of rhythm to be able to click on hit circles accurately.

Sliders are quite similar to hit circles except that they also have a body called a slider track. Not only must the player click on the hit circle, he or she must also slide the cursor along the body of the slider track all the way to the end of the slider, in order to score maximum points.

Spinners are gameplay objects whereby the player must spin the cursor around the centre of the spinner in order to gain points. The faster the player spins, the more points are awarded.

Beatmaps are comprised of the above 3 elements, as well as an accompanying song. Map creators carefully design beatmaps by placing hit circles/sliders/spinners in accordance with the rhythm of the music. Players can then play these beatmaps.

Lens of Essential Experience

By clicking on hit circles in conjunction with the rhythm of the music, I feel more immersed in the music, as compared to passively listening to the music. Moreover, there are thousands of beatmaps to choose from (beatmaps are created by the osu! playerbase and popular beatmaps quickly rise to the top), which also means that there are thousands of songs that players can listen to. Songs are categorised according to various criteria, such as genre, artist, length, and speed (beats per minute or BPM for short). These characteristics can have a profound impact on the immersion experienced by the player. For example, when I am playing a beatmap whose accompanying song has a high BPM, the beatmap could be comprised of many hit circles and sliders which require great speed and accuracy to click. This inspires excitement and adrenaline rushes within me, making me feel more immersed in the spirit of the fast-paced song.

Lens of Surprise

osu! is full of surprises because every day, many new beatmaps are created by the osu! playerbase, and each beatmap has a different configuration of hit circles/sliders/spinners. Hence, playing new beatmaps offers me a fresh, unique experience. Moreover, new beatmaps enable me to discover new songs that I like, songs that I otherwise would never have heard of. Over the years of playing osu!, I have accumulated a playlist of hundreds of songs that I enjoy listening to, ranging from video game soundtracks to J-rock. Many of these songs are produced by small, independent music producers that are obscured by the more popular, commercial music producers that are often found on the front page of youtube. Here is an example of a nice piece of music that I found through osu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIn4NK22CBs. Most people would not have heard of the artist, MiddleIsland, if they have not played osu!.

Lens of Fun

Closely related to the lens of surprise is the lens of fun. To me, fun is a combination of excitement and surprises. In this section I will focus on excitement. In order to spice things up, osu! offers a variety of game modes that players can choose from. For instance, the Hard Rock game mode makes things harder by making the hit circles smaller, as well as making the approach circles close in on the hit circles more rapidly, and so players must react more quickly in order to do well in this game mode. The Hidden game mode eliminates approach circles and makes hit circles disappear after a short time, requiring players to rely on good rhythmic sense and memory in order to be able to click the hit circles accurately. There are many other game modes available, and players can even choose a combination of game modes, such as Hidden + Hard Rock. The harder the game modes applied, the more points a player scores, incentivizing skilled players to play harder game modes. Moreover, players can compare their scores with other players worldwide, adding a further layer of competition and fun. In short, the variety of game modes adds plenty of excitement and fun to the game.

Lens of the Elemental Tetrad

This lens is worth discussing because osu! is unique in that it has absolutely no story. It is set out to be a rhythm game that can be played multiplayer, and it does exactly what it claims to be. This detracts from the book which states that each of the four elements are equally important to the success of a game. In my opinion, osu!’s success has in no way been diminished by the lack of story. Perhaps this is because osu! is not a story-based game, and has no need for a story. In fact, the other three elements have amply compensated for the lack of a story. The mechanics aspect of this game is strong because the gameplay revolves around just three basic elements – hit circles, sliders, and spinners, keeping the mechanics easy to understand and accessible to all players. Moreover, these gameplay mechanics are strongly enhanced by the aesthetics, as the hit circles/sliders/spinners are visually displayed on the screen, making them fully visual in nature. osu! also runs very fast and smoothly even on low-end computers, and this is no surprise because osu! is written in C# on the .NET framework, which is an excellent configuration for producing games that run efficiently. By using such technology, latency is kept low (especially important for rhythm games), and this in turn enhances the gameplay and mechanical aspects of the game (players can play fast-paced beatmaps without being hindered by latency issues).