The world's first trombone-based rhythm music game!
Trombone Champ is a Rhythm Game by indie developer Holy Wow, released on the 22nd of September, 2022. As its title implies, it aims to represent playing the trombone, parodying instrument-based games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Unlike those games, however, no special controller is required; a mouse and keyboard is the recommended way to play.Gameplay is simple. All you have to do is move your mouse back and forth, then click or hit any key on the keyboard to "catch" incoming notes. Maintaining a streak of accurate notes will build up a multiplier and eventually activate Champ mode for even more points. At the end of each song, you are ranked based on your performance and awarded Toots, the game's currency, which can be spent on trading card packs or to fill up the Tootvessel and unlock amazing secrets.
Oh, and did we mention that there are baboons everywhere? There may be more to this game than it seems...
Trombone Champ is available on Steam and made its way to the Nintendo Switch on 14th September, 2023.
Trombone Champ contains examples of the following tropes:
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- There are a variety of accessibility options, such as making the Jump Scares less scary, reducing flashing effects, lowering the amount of Button Mashing required to open chests, and making the score requirements for unlocking hatches easier to attain.
- There is no fail state in the game. No matter how poorly you play, getting to the end of the song is counted as a clear. This even extends to the final battle with Trazom, which is a Puzzle Boss where your score has no relevance on whether or not you succeed or fail. The game in fact expects you to fail miserably at it - the description for its soundtrack, "Eine Kleine (Champ Mix)", states that you played it terribly, while stinking of hot dogs.
- Author Tract: When playing "Entry of the Gladiators", an elephant will show up in the background holding a flag with its trunk that says "BAN THE USE OF CIRCUS ANIMALS".
- Big Eater: Many composers' trading cards mention that they're able to eat large quantities of hot dogs, ranging from Arthur Pryor (who can eat nine in one sitting), to Melba Liston (who can eat 10,000 of them) to Roswell Rudd (who can eat 900 per nanosecond).
- Confusing Multiple Negatives: During Bassmaster Ben's story, he asks you at multiple points if you want to continue or start the story over... in increasingly confusing ways.
- Excuse Plot: The game opens with ominous dramatic narration, comparable to the start of a Dark Souls game, about how music has entered a dark age and the need for a Trombone Champ. There's more narration after the Final Boss as a form of Book Ends, detailing the Treble and Bass Clefs being forged into a new symbol.
- Final Boss: In order to become the Trombone Champ, you must defeat Trazom, an Evil Counterpart to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Repeatedly clicking on his card will reveal two locks, and using the Mysterious Keys obtained from Tootmaster Tom and Bassmaster Ben will unlock the final battle: the Champ Remix of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik".
- Frame Break: Get a high enough score, and the bar on the Score Screen will break through the screen border complete with fragments.
- Inherently Funny Words: "Tromboner" is consistently used by this game instead of the more standard "trombonist", presumably because the "boner" in it makes it funnier.
- Jump Scare: Tootmaster Tom and Bassmaster Ben suddenly pop out of their hatches with a Scare Chord. Sometimes, they'll descend from the top of the screen instead, just to make it more surprising. One option makes this less scary by replacing the Scare Chord with an air horn.
- Little Known Facts: The Loading Screen before playing a song has tidbits such as "It takes one thousand workers a full year to produce a single trombone". The trading cards' descriptions are also questionable.
- Order Is Not Good: The Big Bad of the game represents order, and the Trombone Champ is an agent of chaos.
- Power-Up Food: Hot dogs imbue their holder with power. The more hot dogs you have, the more powerful you become. The Final Boss, Trazom, has a power level of 10, so you need at least 10 hot dog cards in order to defeat him.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Many of the songs in the game are trombone renditions of old songs that have fallen out of copyright, including classical music, national anthems, and folk music. Holy Wow have clearly been keeping track of the passage of works into the public domain, given that at least one song had only passed into the public domain in the same year as its addition to the game.
- Puzzle Boss: The Final Boss song cannot be truly completed simply by playing it. In order to actually win the battle and finish the game, you need to meet a number of conditions: you must equip the Babi Mask and Champ Trombone, have a power level of at least 10 (power comes from hot dogs, so that means at least 10 hot dog cards), and set a baboon preference to either "all" or the same type as Babi, as well as set their quantity to Inferno in the options menu.
- Rank Inflation: You get a grade from F to S based on how many points you get, shown on a meter that fills up. If you get enough points, the meter will overflow and might even go off-screen.
- Rule of Funny: The developers have said that their philosophy during development was "if it's funny, do it." This includes stuff like putting baboons everywhere, telling ridiculous Blatant Lies during loading screens and in trading card descriptions, throwing in airhorns, going full into Toilet Humor with the fart noises, or just making it hard to actually play on tune.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: "Taps"; the background is simply an American flag in a grassy field that slowly fades to black, and none of the usual silliness of the game is present in the song's audio.
- Shout-Out: The cards include Blue Eyes White Baboon and Red Eyes Black Baboon, as well as Mozart Musicstorm.
- Silly Simian: Part of the game's sense of humor consists of putting baboons all over the place, presumably because baboons are inherently funny animals.
- Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying: Many of the "baboons" in the game are actually mandrills, which are not part of the baboon family. The "baboon facts" section of the Advanced Info page acknowledges this.
- Stylistic Suck: While the presentation is solid enough, the trombone sounds aren't. They're amateur-sounding at best, flatulent tooting at worst, and the game embraces the comedy surrounding it.
- To Be a Master: Your goal is to become the Trombone Champ. This involves collecting a large amount of Toots, Turds, and trading cards, opening all of the chests, then defeating Trazom in battle in order to create something new from the combined power of Bass and Treble.
- Toilet Humor:
- During a particularly long break in "Also Sprach Zarathustra", a fart can be heard breaking the silence.
- Cards can be broken down into Turds, a currency used to build specific cards, as well as to fill up Bassmaster Ben's Turdvessel. This process involves lots of fart sounds and flying poop particles.
- One of the unlockable soundfonts is fart sounds.
- Tom the Dark Lord: In the Tromboner Card menu, there's a candle that can be clicked on to summon a demon, who is willing to exchange your collected cards for new trombones. When you're close to collecting them all, he'll mention that he will reveal his true name to you when the time is right. That time is after defeating the Final Boss, and his true name is George.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Hot dogs are described as every composer's favorite treat, and some of trading cards mention them eating ludicrous quantities of them at a time. They're also a Power-Up Food, and merely holding a hot dog increases your power.
- With Lyrics: Some songs from the Public Domain Soundtrack have accompanying lyrics. "Warm Up", which is practicing the scales, has lyrics about warming up your trombone that ends with "my nightmare is now over". And the lyrics for "Also sprach Zarathustra" is just the title repeated over and over again.
