// LOADING OSUMAUK
Loved maps sit outside the ranked ladder - no pp, pure creativity - and the Aspire contest maps push osu! to places the ranking criteria never allow. Here are the ones worth playing at least once.
By OSUMAUK Staff
Not every great map is ranked. The Loved category is a community-voted status for maps that are unranked - often because they break the ranking criteria in some way - but are too good, too loved, to leave buried in the graveyard. Loved maps award no pp, which frees mappers from every constraint the ranking process imposes. Aspire is the most extreme corner of that world: a series of mapping contests where the entire point was to break osu! in interesting ways. This guide is a tour of the maps worth experiencing for their own sake.
Loved maps do not give pp and do not affect your rank. That is the point - play them for the experience, the music, or the spectacle, not the profile. Their leaderboards still track score, so you can compete, you just cannot farm.
A map becomes Loved when the community and the Loved team surface it and vote it in. Many Loved maps were never rankable - they use unconventional slider tricks, story-driven gimmicks, spacing that violates the criteria, or difficulties so extreme the star calculator produces absurd numbers. Loved status preserves them with a real leaderboard while keeping them out of the pp economy. The result is a playground of maps that could never exist in the ranked pool.
These are among the most-played Loved sets in the game - maps the whole community knows, whether for the song, the difficulty, or the sheer spectacle. None of them pay pp, so play them because they are good.
// Beatmap
Bon Appetit S (Oldskool HappyHardcore Remix)
K A Z M A S A · [blend s (260 bpm)] · one of the most-played maps in the game
// Beatmap
Ange du Blanc Pur
ke-ji feat. Nanahira · [ABSOLUTION] · a beloved high-BPM Loved staple
// Beatmap
Chiisana Koi no Uta (Synth Rock Cover)
Araki · [Together] · a hugely popular community-loved set
// Beatmap
Louder than steel
ryu5150 · [ok this is epic] · a modern Loved favourite
Many of the best stream and jump practice compilations are themselves Loved sets - the Stream Practice and Square Jump packs covered in the beatmap packs guide are Loved, which is exactly why they can bundle so many gimmick difficulties into one map.
Aspire is a series of mapping contests that ran with one instruction: break osu!. Mappers built difficulties around impossible-looking slider art, invisible notes, absurd aim ranges, and patterns that make the star-rating calculator return numbers in the tens or even hundreds. These are not maps you farm or even reasonably pass - they are spectacles, closer to interactive art than to a normal difficulty. Watching a top-player replay of an Aspire map is often more the point than playing it yourself.
// Beatmap
The Solace of Oblivion
Helblinde · [Aspire] · the infamous 189-star Aspire map, a calculator-breaking legend
// Beatmap
Acid Rain
Culprate · [Aspire] · slider-art spectacle from the Aspire contest lineage
The star ratings on Aspire maps are not a mistake and not a difficulty you can meaningfully train for. They are the star calculator reacting to deliberately extreme geometry. Treat those numbers as a badge of the contest, not a target.
On the osu! website, filter the beatmap listing by the Loved status to browse the whole category, and sort by most-played to surface the community favourites. Aspire maps are Loved too, so they show up in the same filter - search "Aspire" to find the contest entries. Because none of these give pp, the best way in is simply to pick a song you like or a spectacle you have heard about, and play it with no rank on the line.
"Ranked maps are where you chase the number. Loved and Aspire are where you remember osu! is a game people make for love, not points.
When you want to go back to climbing, the best pp farm maps and easiest pp maps guides cover the ranked side. But every player should spend an evening in the Loved category at least once - it is where the game gets weird in the best way.