Osu! The way to have fun at university.

As we’re back to university, we might not have as much time as we did back in the summer. it’s a given that committing time into consuming games isn’t an option anymore. With that being said, there is a game that can allow us to have fun without wasting that much time.

The game is “Osu!”, a rhythm and tap along the beat kind of game. It’s mainly relying on reflexes, reading the “beatmap” (basically the circles, sliders and spinners that you will be hitting) and muscle memory so that you can get the highest combo possible and ultimately get to a full combo. There is the original mode “Osu!” which the majority of players and streamers play along with 3 other modes.

“osu!taiko” : Taiko is a variant of the game that requires players to hit one of two keys as circles move from the right to the left of the screen (Want to be a Japanese drummer? try this!).

“osu!catch”: In this game mode you have to catch objects falling and get them in your basket, the timing is super hard to get.

“osu!mania”: This variant is really similar to “GuitarHero” you have to synchronize your keystrokes to notes in the screen.

The game launched in 2007. Back then, the graphics were sloppy and the game was kind of full of latency issues. In a nutshell, the game was hard to digest (I played it when it launched…). But, in 2013 they revamped the whole game (Be careful who you call ugly in high school). And the game will receive yet another huge update quite soon.

It’s really easy to setup as the client is nothing but 20mb in size. Having installed the game, all you have to do is download “beatmaps” either one at a time or in packs which are available in the game’s website. The game has a huge community and new maps are added every day. This gets to the one thing that kind of annoyed me when I play, the players create these maps via the editor offered by the game. Some can be messy and doesn’t go well with the song, that can make it quite harder to play and also not that enjoyable. Although, there is a rating system so the chances of you encountering such maps are little to nothing.

There isn’t much to explain about how to play the game as the first tutorial will show you everything you need. Once you finish the tutorial, it’s all about how fast you master the game. Also, you might want to learn some extra mechanics that will help you handle harder maps in the future from Youtube videos.

Here’s a picture showing a sample of the gameplay.

The beatmaps’ difficulty is rated via stars. I advise that you only jump from one level of difficulty to another once you manage to full combo (or at least get an S) on 10 songs at least in that given difficulty (don’t let your ego get the best of you, it’s quite common.). The progress in the game takes a while but is quite noticeable everyday you play because muscle memory plays a huge role, that’s why it’s not really that time consuming to play this game. The game gets really challenging when you are getting past the 3.5 stars point (get ready for the free forearms workout).

I usually play the game when I get the feeling that am getting tired from working on something or when I just need a little break to let my mind work in the background. It helped a lot, that much I can confirm. It’s just that sometimes you’ll get lured into playing some more to pass a song that you’ve been stuck on or a score. You need to have a strong mind!

My personal Ratings:

Fun: 4.5/5

Gameplay: 5/5

Graphics: 4/5 (with the upcoming update it gets even better)