Scott “ Blobby3000 ” Berryman, Chris “ Dumii ” Tran and Tyler “ GranDSenpai ” Isaia aren’t household names in esports. They are, however, part of one of the strongest Australian contingents heading to one of the most mechanically intensive tournaments out there - the osu! World Cup.

osu! is a free-to-play rhythm game developed by Australian Dean “ ppy ” Herbert, released back in 2007. Straight from the loading screen, you are told by a happy techno man to “click the circles to the beat.” As a beginner, it starts off easy, but with an ever-expanding skill ceiling, it’s very easy to get lost in the beat.

Most people's interaction with osu! would be either playing by themselves, on the grind for those sweet performance points or watching the likes of BeasttrollMC, Doomsday, Emilia or the ever elusive Cookiezi seemingly do the impossible.

Clickin' 'round the world

Once a year, the battle lines are drawn and regional pride is put on the line. More than just proving you are top of the ladder, the osu! World Cup brings together the 32 best nations - from Brazil to Romania to Australia - and their best players in the game’s premier tournament.

Nations are seeded based off the average ranks of their top players - Top Seed, High Seed, Low Seed and Unranked. From there, each of the eight groups is made up of one of each seed with the top two advancing from each group. Each match is a best of 9, testing the players on all ‘mods’ - like Double Time, where the song is sped up, or Hidden, where the notes fade out.

Usually, teams are made up of 6-8 players with 4 players playing a map at any one time. Blobby3000 confessed he is weaker at Hidden compared to the rest of the team but is subbed in for Hard Rock (smaller notes, less timing leniency, and a flipped map) or Double Time maps.

“Our team this year is pretty spread out,” he said. Blobby3000 is ranked third in the country and top 70 in the world. “We have good players for every mod - enough to make 4 player squads for everything. Personally, I’m better at the stream based maps.”

The addictive rhythm game takes elements of popular rhythm games like “Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan”, “Elite Beat Agents” and “Beatmania IIDX” and mashes them into one circle-clicking monstrosity. It seems easy when you watch it, but when you start playing it you realise how demanding the game is.

“Two of my high school friends were playing it and showed me a bunch of Cookiezi plays and I went ‘this is really cool,’” said GranDSenpai, the captain of the team.

“I got into it because one of my high school friends lied to me and said he was top 500,” laughed Dumii. “I went to overtake his rank and then he said ‘I’m actually 100k’ - I lost it!”

Now ranked 31st in the world, the 3-time osu! World Cup veteran is looking to go further than he ever has in 2018. Things have gotten off on the right foot too. Drawing a favourable group including Norway, Finland and Argentina, the Australians swept the floor with the most dominant group stage performance in the team’s history, going 15-2 and qualifying as the first seed.

Grouping Up

Opening up the action against Norway with a 5-0 sweep off stream, Australia looked comfortable against Argentina on stream in their 5-1 victory on stream after dropping their own map pick of Reiwai Terrorism due to a couple of unfortunate slider breaks.

The team recovered though, finishing off Argentina with a quad-FC (full combo, which is crucial for getting a high score) on Sola. Another 5-1 against Finland off stream secured Australia top seed and a good bracket heading into the knockouts.

“We did really well," said GranDSenpai, although he had reservations. "We lost the least maps in Group Stage compared to any other team, but we could have lost none.”

GranDSenpai, Dumii and the team fell painfully short of making finals in 2017 after losing in groups to Denmark and eventual winners Poland. It clearly still weighs on Dumii.

“For me, we couldn’t have done better," added Dumii. "We went from being eliminated in the Group Stage in 2017 to playing in the Round of 16 in 2018. It was the most nerve-wracking experience I’ve ever had, but now I’m used to it.”

“We didn’t do that bad against Poland,” Blobby3000 said, “but we pretty much ‘inted’ against Denmark and that cost us.”

Speaking of Poland, the returning champions have missed out on finals this year to the surprise of most. While it’s been a great time to create memes about the champion’s curse, it’s also raised some questions about the map pool.

“The thing about the Group Stage is - while different people have different opinions - I think Groups are too easy,” said Blobby3000. “There is no chance Poland would have lost if the maps were harder.”

"The maps in Groups should be at least one star difficulty higher," Dumii agreed. The maps averaged for groups at 5 stars. "The world champions shouldn’t be knocked out first."

“In tournaments you need to be consistent and be able to FC maps on command,” GranDSenpai said. “The map pool should be harder but it also shows the more consistent players.”

Team work makes the dream work

osu! is a game not commonly associated with team play, but the team based setting of the osu! World Cup allows teams to build camaraderie outside of just knowing each other on the ladder.

“We are all complete idiots - let’s get that one out of the way,” Blobby3000 said while Dumii yelled out some profanities in the background before GranDSenpai added the fortunate line that “we can relieve tension between maps.”

“We all got really close this year and we like to banter a lot. We just enjoy playing games and chilling with each other,” he continued.

In a game where individual skill plays a big part, a team based tournament doesn’t seem to fit. However, when you only get one chance to play a map you’ve practised for hours, being able to maintain a level head after a bad map is crucial. You can’t click the circles for your teammates, but keeping morale high will get rid of the match nerves.

"There's not much teamwork going on in the maps themselves," Dumii added. "But what you can do in between maps can really change team performance."

Their performance in Groups has locked them in with a date with Romania this Sunday. Romania qualified with a 12-10 map record, beating Poland 5-2 to knock the reigning champions out, but the team is confident they can get Australia’s best placing at a World Cup yet.

“We are very confident with the map pool for Round of 16,” Dumii said.

"It’s a good fit against Romania because we can abuse some of their weaknesses," GranDSenpai added.

“They are good at Hard Rock, but weaker in Hidden and NoMod,” Blobby3000 explained. “Not to mention badeu [Romania’s captain] can’t do streams.”

As for the rest of the tournament, they are still feeling like underdogs.

“Heading into the tournament we wanted Top 6, but now we want Top 3,” said Blobby3000.

“No one is expecting anything out of us," Dumii said. "If we win on top of that it’ll be insane.”

“In the perfect situation we don’t have to play against the UK or USA until the Semi’s, so we can definitely make a deep run,” GranDSenpai said. “Doing well in World Cup has been my goal for the year, so I want to keep going. And if anything, ppy would be pretty proud if we made it far.”