Beatmap Spotlights: November 2017

The November Spotlights are here, and with that my last announcement before Kurokami officially takes charge! Enjoy the best of what the month has to offer, and nab yourself a shiny Spotlight medal in the process!

The beatmap charts for the November Spotlights can be found here. Their respective packs are available at the Beatmap Pack Listing for easier access. The November 2017 Spotlights rankings will end on 15th January 2018.

Past Spotlights results

First of all, congratulations to the winners of the October 2017 Spotlights. They receive one month of supporter status for their efforts!

• osu!: Toy
• osu!taiko: zkane2
• osu!catch: [-naniwa-]
• osu!mania: Cryolien

Changes within the Spotlight Team

We're welcoming Mao and Nardoxyribonucleic among the managers! They will help with the Themed Spotlights during the next year with their preparation and release.

In conjunction with the above changes, it is my pleasure to welcome our new map selectors into the team.

• osu!: Battle, Halfslashed, Delis, Regou, Crystal, Gamu
• osu!taiko: hikikochan, Neppu
• osu!catch: Crystal
• osu!mania: Garalulu, Pope Gadget, Asherz007, TheToaphster

November 2017 Spotlights

osu!

Don't let the difficulty name fool you, because that's exactly what jonathanlfj would want! Shinkirou is a catchy track by Diao ye zong about a single character taking on the personas of others, with each verse differing from one another. Similarly, jonathanlfj has pulled off the incredible with an exotic concept that reflects the song's message brilliantly. With a plethora of styles reproduced in this map, his mastery and knowledge of other mappers is clearly visible and results in an absolutely wonderful playing experience! A truly deserving winner of this month's spotlights.

Even though he's mapped seven songs by Ito Kashitaro already, appleeaterx's rendition of Hyakka Ryouran is his best work yet! The highest difficulty features unconventional rhythm choice in each chorus and highly spaced streams throughout, while Milan-'s Insane and the lower difficulties are a treat as well. Be sure to watch out for the massive slider speed changes - they're bound to catch you off guard!

A full set, for a full song, by a team of experienced mappers! Fantastic difficulties are seen all around in Vert's latest mapset, Gokuraku Jodo, culminating in Zweib's Expert, where he showcases an extremely high intensity style that perfectly supports the song! The low-BPM pop song lends itself to creative and interesting mapping techniques that participants of the set don't hesitate to take advantage of. A perfect set for players of all skill levels to enjoy!

Being the winner of the 3rd Newspaper Cup - a prestigious mapping contest - Regou and fish39's map of ESQUARIA's Kantsubaki is clearly one of the standout ones this month! The marathon is a Touhou soundtrack remix with rather unordinary rhythm, making for a technically demanding map that could give even some of osu!'s better players a hard time. Good luck!

For fans of the Touhou Project and unconventional mapping alike, Hollow Wings brings us a wonderful mapset of Ten'imuhou. The highest difficulty of the mapset brings an energetic feel with an overall high spacing, while keeping gameplay engaging with a huge variety in jump patterns. A must play if you're looking for an aim challenge!

osu!taiko

The winning mapper and the artist of this month's Spotlights are by no means unheard of in the osu! community, and this mapset of Chroma's Collapse is proof of that. MMzz managed to make a balanced spread, featuring quite difficult lower difficulties and an amazing Inner Oni.

Other than the unusually difficult, but good Muzukashii and Oni difficulties, this set stands out by having a streamy Inner Oni with a lot of finishers as advertised, and being an X-rated map at a moderate BPM without 1/6 bursts, which is something that has become rare these days. The streams in this map are nicely aligned to the music, varied and fun to play. A worthy #1 spot for osu!taiko's November Spotlights!

A neat map created by Remus in this month. He doesn't overuse any 1/4 (or even 1/6) patterns, which is quite surprising considering his status as a relatively newer mapper. The highlight of this map is the regular pattern usage and clever way of hitsounding in the guitar solo section that can distinguish different parts and make the whole section consistent.

In conclusion, the entire map contains rather solid structure, well arranged hitsounds and patterns that make it worthy to be part of this month's Spotlights.

Ever wanted to bang some drums to the sound of intense violins? Well then, Memme - Avalanche delivers just that with some of the most amazingly well structured taiko difficulties that we have seen this month, accompanied by an absolutely stunning storyboard by Starfy!

The highlight of this set would definitely be the Inner Oni difficulty by aabc271. With clever usage of finishers, 1/6 patterns, streams and rhythm switches throughout the map, it offers both a fun yet challenging experience for veteran players. We mustn't forget about the Muzukashii and Oni difficulties though - mapped by iloveyou4ever and Nardoxyribonucleic respectively, they too are also beautifully crafted for players of lower levels to enjoy.

osu!catch

For this month, Sinnoh has single-handedly crafted this interpretation of Camellia's Towards the Horizon!

Despite its low BPM, the song contains complex rhythms - and this mapset uses that complexity to its advantage. With rhythmic diversity using a variety of beat snaps, engaging patterns with its movement-heavy style, and an evenly-spread set for different skill levels, this set shines over the horizon for this month's Spotlights.

ZiRoX's mapset of M2U's "A Bella!" featuring guest difficulties from JBHyperion and Deif is a real treat in this month's Spotlights. ZiRoX's clean mapping style is as pleasant as ever to play across all his difficulties, wonderfully balancing the unique sounds of the song with appropriate level of difficulty.

Deif's Overdose however turns things up a bit. No doubt familiar to viewers of the osu!catch World Cup 2017 and notoriously tricky to play with Hidden, Deif takes every opportunity provided by the song - combining big hyperdashes with fast sliders to make maintaining a high accuracy a difficult task.

This beatmap is ultimately great fun to play and one you really shouldn't miss out on this month.

Having been featured in the osu!catch World Cup a few months ago, JBHyperion takes us all the way to a different meta in the ranked section, with the top difficulty of his Arcadia mapset sporting an unconventional Circle Size and gimmicky patterns. Moreover, players of all skill levels can enjoy the ride through this mapset with a difficulty tailored for them. I'm sure you'll be begging for an encore in your attempt to get the highest score on this cool beatmap!

osu!mania

Eraser brings us here a really interesting beatmap! It is also his first ranked guest difficulty, so congratulations to him for this too!

The song itself calls for a lot of variety and this is exactly what Eraser did. He managed to put all kinds of different patterns into one very interesting and challenging beatmap. It begins with a lot of long notes, all with a different length which require very accurate play to hit them correctly. Later we reach a section which is very jack-heavy and at the end, we get the most difficult part with long notes and jacks combined. All over the map there are also some slider velocity changes which give the patterns an extra touch.

Overall a very challenging beatmap and a well deserved place in the November Spotlights!

For his 20th map, Fresh Chicken went from the wooshs to the scratches with a map of the "BMS of fighters 2015" song Dreadnought by Mastermind(xi+nora2r)!

With the help of Lude and Valentrix, Fresh Chicken maintains the momentum of solid, fun and efficient mapsets. Mixing a lot of different patterns with smooth speed changes for 2:13 min of drain time, Dreadnought is definitely an interesting map for both competitive and casual play!

The Spotlights, formerly known as Monthly Ranking Charts, has undergone many positive changes in the last few years, thanks to the support and critique of many users, as well as the dedicated work of the Spotlights team itself which I very much appreciate.

Without these people and the community, the Spotlights wouldn't be what it is today and I am happy that I was able to be a part of this. I'm sure we can expect many more new things in the future, so my appeal to all of you is to stay tuned!

With that said, I thank everyone for their long standing participation and wish you all the very best for the future!

—OnosakiHito