Osu!

This article is currently under review by Soviet, a member of the ICU Doctoral Program.

Osu!
Osu! logo since 1945
Developer(s)	Shit ton of open-source contributors
Creator(s)	Dean Herbert (Peppy)
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, MacOS X, Linux, Android, iOS
Year of inception	1870
Release	2007
Genre	Rhythm game and Dopamine
Official website	https://osu.ppy.sh

OSU! (always spelled with an exclamation point to be overly dramatic) is a fun game for the little niche corner of gamers that like clicking circles to the beat of Jap music and pretending they're Mozart. It is also an aim trainer for anime weebs crafted by supreme leader Dean "peppy" Herbert and the Japanese to help promote weeb propaganda and to hide their war crimes from people from the US through music. The game was released on Windows on September 16, 2007, and was later put on every OS to exist. That's if you can get into the extremely crammed TestFlight for iOS or if 3FPS for circle games is good enough for you on Android.

Gameplay

In OSU!, your objective is to click circles (which are actually ovals) to the beat of your favourite anime girl using your finger (a pen and drawing tablet for the elite). Who needs innovative games when you can tap on shitty circles until your fingers fucking fall off. On completion, an AI robot (the calculator app) will automatically measure PP (the in-game currency that determines how likely your fingers are to fall off) and put you on a leaderboard to let you see how your finger tapping compares to other people's finger tapping. That’s it.

OSU! games aren’t fought in arenas or third world countries, instead, they take place in “Beatmaps” which comprise of circles appearing around your screen waiting to be clicked. Unfortunately, since anyone can upload their own beatmaps, and because getting beatmaps to be put in the cool kid's section called "Ranked" requires just having a few connections with corrupt "Beatmap Nominators", trolls have obviously put Encyclopædia Dramatica content on the site. Kind of like Wikipedia, no quality control.

Modes of operation

There are four modes, (officially named "rulesets") in which you can compete:

• Osu!standard: The original where players just click circles. This game mode is specifically designed for the dim bulbs in the world who can’t do more than a simple task. The game is played using either a pen or a stylus and a drawing tablet.

• Osu!taiko: This game mode simulates Japanese taiko drums by having the player pretend they have drumsticks in their hands the size of logs instead of clicking with their fingers. In reality, this is the devs trying to hide the fact that you still use a keyboard and that your fingers are still prone to falling off, and also an attempt to make it seem like you are actually learning an instrument and not just wasting your life.

• Osu!catch: In this game mode, you are a malnourished slave from Iraq and have to catch falling fruits, so you don’t starve. In typical Osu! fashion, you will have to catch the fruits to the beat of Japanese songs whose singers sound like rats. Please do not play this dogshit gamemode, it is not even a rhythm game and should not exist.

• Osu!mania: Is a vertical scrolling game disguised as a piano simulator to make it seem like you are actually learning something. Notes fall from the sky (or floor) and you have to press the corresponding keys like you’re trying to finish a 100-page essay a minute before it’s due to the beat of the music to win.

Your job in all of these is to trick the robot into thinking that your pp is bigger than others by playing special maps called "pp farms" designed to inflate your ego. Sizes here are measured in 1/10s of a mm of your best score, with the largest one being owned by mrekk with ~20cm.

The game also allows developers to create custom rulesets. A few examples of custom rulesets include sentakki (a ripoff of maimai), tau (a ripoff of tau) and a ripoff of literally every fucking rhythm game to have ever come onto this fucking earth. Custom rulesets don’t give PP leaving many, including the developers, to simply not care and let them rot into irrelevancy.

A beatmap made by user HitlerDidNothingWrong727WYSI. Way better than Hatsune Miku songs.

Editor

Unlike other games, OSU also features an editor which allows the Picasso of the playerbase to use ChatGPT free version to create their own levels. This was added because the developer simply could not be bothered to add new content. The sole purpose of any map-makers existence is to get their AI generated slop creation onto the ranked sections to finally prove to their mum that they have no life.

To create maps, the player must first use questionable methods to illegally pirate a soundtrack from their favourite anime. While it is technically possible to use "normie" music (the kind of music that actually uses instruments like rock and jazz), it is highly frowned upon in the community, and you will be called “a loser that can’t keep up with the times” by the Beatmap Nominators. Nominators can only listen to JPop with lyrics they will never understand.

So, the creation begins and you spend hours forging the bestest beat map ever. You sacrifice your personal life for this, you spend hours and hours and eventually get a long-awaited message from an admin that reads, “this is dogshit wrapped in catshit Jew.” After this kind message you delete your entire map and repeat.

After try after try and enough bribes (paid in pp) to make Starmer repeal the Online Dox Yourself Act, you might get a nominator to press the magical "nominate" button and get your beatmap with the mythical "Ranked" tag on a green background. This small achievement actually does nothing but show to all Osu! players that you are devoid of a life outside of creating circles.

Clients

There are three official clients for Osu!: lazer (misspelled to be “hip with the kids”), stream (where you can't stream shit) and stable (which is anything but stable)

• Stable: It is the older, more reliable version when it comes to randomly crashing for no reason. It is used by ~75% of the player base and all of the boomers (20+ year olds) as of 2025 despite it being God awful and looking like Windows XP. Stable was coded back in 2007 with the ancient coding language of C# which is so bad, it won silver for the worst games of the moment. Unfortunately, nothing beats League of Legends.

• Lazer: It is the equivalent of Arch: Meant for users who like to brag with "I use lazer btw". It is open source, receives more updates and is meant to help you more efficiently tap fucking circles and has slightly less shitty code, written in the ultra-modern C# language. It is the developer's favourite child.

• Stream: Stream is a discontinued pog client made by the developer due the majority of the poor player base not being able to afford a PC. It was discontinued due to lazer being the superior option running on mobile with a hot 3FPM (Frames per Minute).

Demographic

The target audience for Osu! are poor and high 19 year olds who think that listening to Japanese Vocaloid songs with lyrics they don't even understand is tuff. The player base is overwhelmingly composed of male anime nerds that really enjoy clicking circles to the beat of Jpop. Despite the ridiculously low hardware requirements for PC, most players still complain about framerate problems and not being able to hit 30FPS. The most common hardware setup is a Pentium IV with integrated graphics wrapped in a potato case.

The "humour" of the Osu! community is just as dogshit as the game. There is a grand total of one fucking meme in this whole community, a number which hasn't changed in 8 years. WHEN YOU FUCKING SEE IT. IT IS SEVEN HUNDREED AND TWENTY MOTHER FUCKIN' SEVEN (727) !!. Please laugh.