How Is ITGmania Different from StepMania?

Updated

ITGmania is a fork of StepMania 5 built for the rhythm-game community, and the differences come down to four things: security fixes, built-in networking and online leaderboards, bundled content like the Simply Love theme, and continued compatibility with StepMania 5 themes. If you already have StepMania 5 songs and themes, ITGmania is designed to keep working with them — you're mainly trading the original engine for one that's actively maintained by players.

The Core Relationship

ITGmania is not a separate game engine written from scratch. It's a community-driven fork of StepMania, which is why the site describes it as "backwards compatible" and why existing StepMania 5 content carries over. The practical consequence: switching is less about learning a new system and more about what the fork adds on top.

What ITGmania Changes

Area StepMania (mainline) ITGmania
Security Vulnerabilities documented in mainline Many of those vulnerabilities fixed
Networking Not built into the game Built-in networking, so the game itself can make network requests
Online leaderboards Not built in Full support via GrooveStats
Bundled theme Depends on your install Simply Love pre-installed and updated for the new features
Unlock content Manual Downloads and unzips unlocks for events (ITL and Stamina RPG) from inside the game, reloadable from the song wheel
Theme compatibility StepMania 5 themes StepMania 5 themes still work

Built-in networking and leaderboards

This is the biggest functional gap. In mainline StepMania, online score submission generally means running a separate client alongside the game. ITGmania makes network requests from within the game itself, which is what enables GrooveStats leaderboard support without extra tooling. The site notes more networking features are planned.

Unlock downloading

Event unlocks for ITL and Stamina RPG can be downloaded and unzipped directly in-game, then reloaded from the song wheel. In mainline StepMania this is a manual file-management task.

Simply Love included

Simply Love, described as the most popular visual theme, ships pre-installed and has already been updated to use the new features. On mainline StepMania you'd install it yourself and might hit compatibility gaps with newer functionality.

Smaller quality-of-life additions

The site also lists fast profile switching, player-specific visual delay, disabling windows on a per-player basis, and both rate mod types.

What Carries Over

  • StepMania 5 themes — explicitly supported, so a theme you already use should still run.
  • Your existing songs — the downloads page offers a program-only build for people who already have songs, separate from the full install that includes Club Fantastic songs.
  • Platforms — Windows 7 or higher, macOS 11 (Big Sur) or higher (Intel builds also work on M1), and Ubuntu 18.04 or higher plus compatible distributions. A portable build bundles executables for all platforms in a single folder, with no songs included.

When ITGmania Is the Better Choice

Choose ITGmania if you want online leaderboards through GrooveStats without extra software, if you play ITL or Stamina RPG events and want unlocks handled in-game, or if you want Simply Love working out of the box with current features. Choose mainline StepMania if you depend on a specific setup that hasn't been verified against the fork, or you simply prefer to stay on the original project.

The safest way to decide is to test without committing: download the portable build, which keeps all game files in one folder and includes no songs, and point it at content you already have. That tells you whether your themes and songs behave before you replace anything.

Current version listed on the site is 1.3.0. Bug reports, release notes, and source builds are linked from the ITGmania site and its GitHub.