Project Loved: February Week 1

Bringing you the latest from the Project Loved community voting, now in a handy newspost format! Check out what's up for vote this week, and cast yours now!

If you've been following our twitter lately, you might have noticed that the Loved voting has been well and truly under way each week since the beginning of the year.

From now on, we're proud to announce that we'll be bringing you the week's latest voting options in a handy post format, complete with some descriptions of the maps from the Loved Captains themselves.

If you're not familiar with what Loved is, the category is essentially a place where old and beloved maps that never quite (or couldn't) make it to Ranked go. Added purely from community vote, Loved maps aren't worth pp, but do have scoreboards and are usually a lot of fun to play.

Voting is super easy - click the banners to get taken to the voting thread for that map, which contains a poll where you can cast your vote. Any map with enough posts passes muster, and gets in next week.

Let's get stuck in!

Navigation

• osu!
• osu!taiko
• osu!mania

osu!

With over 550 favourites, Snow Drive by jieusieu might be the most popular map in the vote this week, and for good reason.

The map is ridiculously difficult, clocking at 8.5 stars, and features brutal cross screen jumps as well as a killer spaced stream during the bridge, and has received acclaim from plenty of top players for its playability. Can you survive this lemur of a map?

Returning for its chance at redemption after not passing during the old voting system is handsome's unravel.

The map sports circle size 2, and features blisteringly high slider velocity with complex 1/4 movement. Despite the difficulty of the concepts used, the map still remains very playable and is definitely worth checking out - if you can handle it!

A full set of a brutal aim map that disguises itself as a stream map. Krimek's Genesis at Oasis is an incredibly high tempo map that builds its intensity towards the end of the map all at a blistering 212 BPM. See if you can handle this behemoth.

Cassu2's Foolish Hero bundles lapix's Hi-Tech style with some interesting high-tech slider patterns themselves. Overall, this proves to be an incredibly enjoyable and popular addition to the Loved vote this week.

Mazare Party as a song is a collaboration between 3 popular Japanese vocalists, and likewise the map is a collaboration between 3 popular mappers!

ProfessionalBox, Asahina Momoko, and Nathan join forces in a fantastic collab to a fantastic song, with a few lower difficulties by toybot and NeilPerry to fill out the set.

With almost 300 favourites and a guest difficulty by Guy, ShiraKai's Responsibility Response is a classic mapset which has seen tons of multiplayer play since 2015.

Since it is a lower star difficulty than the majority of the maps featured this week, this is a highly accessible mapset for players of every skill level.

Shiro's latest masterpiece, GvP gained quick popularity as an equally difficult jump and stream map. Shiro makes great use of various patterns throughout a very repetitive song including a guitar slider and an outro treble clef.

I wish you Good Luck in G Major.

Returning for another chance at Loved after the initial rounds of voting, Grenade by Nanashima Asami is a very well constructed tech map that has been featured in multiple tournaments.

The quality of this map is incredibly high, from the patterning to the rhythm choices, and the song backing it is sure to get your blood pumping!

Getting another crack at the Loved category, Zapy's famous Game Brain mapset makes its return for individual map voting.

For a 2012 map, it features some really innovative patterns and rhythm choices that keep swapping between the beat and the melody. Just watch out for all the doubles interspersed throughout the map!

To end the list for the osu! mode, Necroluttah's Preserved Valkyria needs little introduction as the set is already an incredibly popular one amongst top players.

This set has amassed over 230 favourites and remains one of the most popular unranked 8* maps. Though only 2 minutes long, it's a wild ride.

osu!taiko

Ishikitakaikei yandere doemushoujoJ is as much of a cool map as it is a mouthful to pronounce. The main gimmick of it all is that each difficulty has corresponding snaps - namely 1/4, 1/6 and 1/8 respectively, with each difficulty playing somewhat similar but with their own unique spin on representing the track.

It also shows the rather interesting way osu!taiko handles star rating, with 1/8 being considered "Easier" even though it is by far the most difficult of the three.

Dnagib Kaerb, or Break Bigband as we'll be calling it, is an extremely infamous map. The TWC Finals Tie-Breaker, mapped by the also infamous Firce777, is one of, if not the, hardest maps ever used in a world cup.

Employing lots of 1/8 and some speed-up sections, Break Bigband is a really technically draining map, coupled with the blistering speed, this rivals even some of our hardest Loved maps like Scattered Faith.

A very old map by today's standards, Knife is a map that has seen community-wide adoration. LZD's style shines in one of his oldest maps.

With a unique, fun-focused style of mapping for breakcore, beside the usual tech-fest, this map has gained lots of fans over the years, and will certainly gain more in the future as well. Having been in a lot of Tournaments as well, Knife should fit right in with the rest of our picks!

yea's Figue Folle is a really interesting take. Employing lots of spinners and sliders throughout, it separates it's take on the song from other maps by just simply being unique.

Their style cannot be understated, as they take all the most unique parts of a song and end up well-representing them in a map, one way or another. Figue Folle is no different, and we enjoy it for those quirks and qualities as well.

Ah, a funny little quirk about this map. The description for this actually says "This WILL be my first ranked mapset, or else I am not BrambleClaw!". Well, BrambleClaw actually changed his name to Bramble, and this will possibly be his first Loved mapset.

Kinda funny how life works isn't it? Anyway, a map well known to players from TWC 2016, this is a very fun set with a little for all types of players, with an outstanding top diff.

osu!mania

The Mastermind is not just a fancy title; the entire chart is a battle against what you see and what you're actually supposed to do.

This chart contains blisteringly fast but very discreet SVs in some sections, and extremely clinical slowdowns in certain others. This creates an interesting metagame element; do you want to reduce your speedmod to deal with the super fast SVs and in return deal with even slower slowdowns, or do you want to increase your speedmod to make the slowdowns a little easier at the expense of increasing the probability of messing up in the super fast SV sections?

This additional level of metagame, unique chart structure, and a chart that reflects the callousness and unforgiving nature of the track are reasons why I believe that many players will receive it very well (and some of them do already) and why this chart should be in the Loved section.

Souzou Forest is one of 17VA's most popular charts, it is a fun LN chart which is decently fast but also fairly simplistic stair based patterning, which makes it both easy to hit and hard to get good accuracy on.

It has been featured in the MWC 7K 2016 Quarterfinals and has retained its popularity to this day.

As the song title suggests, The Scales of Struggle scales the amount of struggle with each step up the difficulty ladder. Ranging from easy peasy to outright warfare, each difficulty tests the waters of speedy technicality for the whole playerbase.

A great collaboration between veteran charter Fullerene- and veteran speedster Staiain, which we're sure you'll enjoy.

A very good stamina/speed chart for high level of players, featuring a wide variety of rates for bigger audience to enjoy. Great chart to play through to the end, constantly pushing your limits until the climax which can destroy even the best.

This chart stood witness to some of the most amazing moments of MWC 7K 2017 - the match between Thailand and Phillipines.

Are you dexterous enough? Then do we have the mapset for you! Here it is, a full range of 4K to 7K marathon-length charts clocking in at a whopping 20 minutes of what can only be perceived as bloody psychopathic content by arcwinolivirus, of featured artist Helblinde's DEAD END. Where we're going, we don't need roads.

A fan favourite, while Kumo no Kireme is a mapset that has been around for many years, it still stands out today as one of the catchiest and blood-pumping mapsets due to the structure of the charts and song choice.

There's something visceral about the combination of chordjacks and hard bass kicks that cause players to be fully engrossed in, and the highest difficulties of this mapset utilise that visceral appeal quite well. For players who struggle with the highest difficulties of this mapset, not to worry; there are lower difficulties that capture the ethos of the track quite well all the same.

Our seventh chart on the list is a classic. This chart, created by Cirno in 2013, is a chart that's heavily inspired by IIDX with some very interesting concepts executed.

Tricky one handed patterns with general stream heavy layering is topped with OD 10 making it a very good accuracy tester and HP 9 ensures that you need to know what you're doing to even pass it!

The next submission is Quo Vadis, a mapset by JamesHappy, with guest difficulties from arcwinolivirus, Evening and XleonQ.

Featured in various tournaments, this is a 4+7K spread that's mostly consisting of jumpstream/chordstream oriented patterning with some neat SV usage in higher difficulties. The funky vibe of the song combined with flowy and bursty layering creates for a very fun chart that's been very popular over the years, having 83 favourites gained since it's submission in late 2014.

Another fan favourite, ApolloN is a mapset by (fairly) prolific charters bbu2 and LeiN-. LeiN-, being one of the best 4K charters in 2015, places another feather in his cap with solid 4K difficulties.

The Hard and Insane difficulties utilised deliberate patterning in a way that not many charters utilised at the time, with beautiful use of repetition and cathartic second halves overall. bbu2's 7K Extreme chart utilises fairly similar concepts (e.g. repetition), and the concepts are executed very well.

Its extant popularity, strong accessibility (a full mapset for two keymodes!) and solid charts are all factors that contribute to this mapset being a very strong contender to be put into Loved section.

Once again, PiraTom and inteliser pull off an enjoyable LN chart which still stands as a popular challenge today.

This is a quick, dense and varied semi-finals pick in 2016 meaning that this chart certainly doesn't mess about, and getting that full combo may be easier said than done. That said, good luck!

From everyone on the Project Loved team, we hope you enjoy this week's selection, and look forward to the next! The winning maps will hit the beatmap listing sometime during the weekend and will be announced via the osugame twitter.

—Ephemeral