The primary emphasis of gameplay is to adapt and react to stimuli in the form of clicking or tapping on hit circles, which requires good eye-hand coordination. These hit circles have other forms, such as sliders and spinners which are interacted with in similar ways. These different gameplay mechanics are part of a beatmap. Beatmaps are a combination of a song, button layout as well as themes or cosmetic skins to make each beatmap unique. These are created by other users and typically feature varying difficulties. There are four official gamemodes: osu!standard, osu!mania, osu!catch, and osu!taiko.
—Nikorasu Guregorio (nikos3194)