Halloween Descends

The dread moon rises once again as Halloween visits for another year. The night sky sings with terrors and thrills abound - come check out what we've got planned to celebrate this delightfully spooky occasion!

The mischievous spirit that possessed the osu! game client last year has returned again! Featuring the top ten voted picks from the absolutely outstanding showing from this year's Halloween Fanart contest, the main menu has received a brand new set of limited-time seasonal backgrounds, starring the osu! mascots in all of their spooky glory.

And boy, are some of them spooky.

You can check out all of the winning entries over at the contest listing page - and we highly suggest you do, because there are some absolutely incredible entries this year!

Here's a peek at the winning 10 entries, complete with links to download the full pictures:

Coming in first place with a tremendous 18009 votes was Leissss magical rendition of Mocha and Pippi dressed as witches. Full of arcane linework and glowing flair, it's hardly a surprise to see such a compelling entry take so many votes. Well done!

Snatching second place with 12629 votes next up was snowyani2000's osu!-themed Halloween groupshot, featuring a multitude of icons ranging from popular osu! players, to songs and more! Throw in a succubus Pippi, a ghostly Maria, and an oni-schoolgirl Mocha plus a handful of the popular community mascots, and you've got something quite special to sit back and pick apart.

In third place, Hikerumin's double-witch Mocha-Pippi combo set to a very festive Halloween setting was marvellously enchanting, impressing enough voters to score 11692 votes overall. Yowza.

CUTE! Ahem. Hot on the last entry's heels, agataruby's outrageously adorable piece of Pippi and Mocha in elaborate Halloween-themed dresses scored 11510 votes, slipping behind third place by a hair. owo indeed little ghost, owo indeed.

Standing firm in fifth place overall with 8852 votes, guppy's depiction of a catgirl Pippi enjoying an abstract waltz through a sea of triangles, candy and moons was one of the more evocative entries we noted in the contest overall. Beautifully executed, and a well-deserved placing!

Simple, clean and cool, Raynel's 8864 vote-winning, beautifully concise artwork of Pippi in a witch costume before an All Hallow's moon shows that you don't always need the bells and whistles to win votes - just a solid execution of spectacular design. Amazing stuff.

One of the more definitively spooky entries in the contest, Evaine's terrifically terrifying drawing of a bloodthirsty Pippi standing atop a mound of skulls scared 8236 votes out of our participants. Some say this is a depiction of the last thing you see when you try to uninstall the game. You're here forever, after all.

Equal parts cute and menacing, ZeethusOSU's ominous entry features Pippi, Mocha and Maria all dressed up for Halloween before a shrine, and scored 7757 votes overall. What's in Maria's pumpkin cauldron? Some of the osu!mania World Cup commentators, probably.

Enjoying a moonlit jaunt, Yoviry's enigmatic entry nabbed 5002 votes overall, featuring all of the official osu! mascots enjoying their time under the moon together. It turns out Mocha wasn't scared of Halloween after all!

And finally, with 4749 votes overall, B4D0U's chibi Halloween cuteness wrapped it all up with a much-adored dash of sugary sweetness. And creative use of the cookie template, too!

As with last year, this little client-makeover also features cYsmix's spectacularly spooky remix of the main osu! theme, pumpkins.

We're also delighted to share a special Halloween-themed piece from one of our favourite osu! artists, Anny, which will also be appearing in the main-menu. Check it out!

(You can get a full-size, high-quality version of the image from Anny's DeviantArt!)

Halloween is terrifying, so don't go at it alone! osu! now supports inviting your friends to spectate and join your multiplayer games via Discord. The intrepid seers among us may have noticed this hitting the Cutting-Edge builds of the game earlier in the month, but now it's here for everyone to enjoy!

How does it work? It's really simple:

• Update the game by opening the game client first! This new fancy Discord business only works with the special Halloween version of the game and any newer builds going forward - it will NOT work at all if you do not do this.
• Make sure Discord detects osu! as a registered game on your system - it generally does this by default, so you shouldn't need to worry about it. You can check this in the App Settings -> Games tab of the Discord options menu.
• Turn on the Display currently running game as status message option in the Games tab.
• Start any game of multiplayer, head on over to your local Discord haunt and click the shiny green button in front of the plus sign (). It may take a few seconds to appear if you've only just started a game.

Your friends can now click on the 'Join' button to stand by you in battle against the horrors of the night! Or to fight over host, or whatever. Halloween is a night of horrors after all, and we don't judge.

See the whole process in action:

You can also click on any one of your friends on a shared server who is currently playing osu!, and see what they're up to, as well as ask to join - if they're playing multiplayer.

There's also options to spectate, and more! Fancy. Read more about it on the forums!

We've got a brand new selection of Hush Hush medals available for your achievement-hunting enjoyment. Don't spoil these for other people who might want to find them!

Here's a few hints to get you started:

• Thrill of the Chase - Hunting always was a bit of a classic pursuit.
• The Girl in the Forest - First generation in more ways than one.
• You Can't Hide - Don't even try to hide.
• True Torment - You will suffer.
• The Firmament Moves - Three steps does it walk, but most witness only one. Seek the one renewed, four times different from what it was before.
• Too Fast, Too Furious - This is scarier than you think.
• Feelin' It - Get in the groove and multiply those beats.
• Overconfident - Wrecked.
• Spooked - Bet you didn't see that coming.

A few of these new medals are considered exceptionally difficult in a similar way to the Equilibrium medal from the first set of the new Hush Hush medals. Think outside the box if you go looking!

Happy Halloween from all of us on the osu!team!

—Ephemeral