osu!

osu! is a rhythm game whose basic gameplay is taken from Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. As in that game, players hit circles, move through slider tracks, and spin wheels in time with the selected music track. A constantly draining health bar can be maintained by successful actions, and the level is failed if the bar ever reaches 0. Playing well also increases the player's final score and letter grade for the level. Levels in this game are called beatmaps, and many of them are created by players.

In addition to five basic difficulty levels, osu! also offers modifiers to make gameplay easier or harder, while adjusting the score to compensate. Three other game modes also exist, each one offering a different style of gameplay. Taiko mode plays like the Taiko no Tatsujin games, in which the player must simply hit drum beats as they scroll across the screen. In Catch the Beat, beatmap elements from the standard mode of gameplay are converted to fruits that fall down from the top of the screen, and players move a character across the bottom of the screen to catch as many as possible. Finally, osu!mania has gameplay similar to that of the Beatmania IIDX series, in which the player hits buttons in time with falling music notes.