Trombone Champ News

We just pushed a tiny update that should bring the game to 1.27F. This patch fixes literally one line of code that was preventing Favorites from loading.

If you're curious, here's the line of code (it was accidentally commented out):

GlobalVariables.track_collection_loader.initiallyLoadFavoritesCollection();

We're currently working on a patch for the Switch version, controller support for the PC version, and a handful of new tracks. Stay tuned and thanks for your patience!




Holy Wow Studios

Today, Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.27E! Mainly, this update adds support for 21:9 ultrawide resolutions, but it tweaks some other stuff as well...

[h5]Note: mod compatibility[/h5]

As usual, we've had this update available as a beta for a few weeks so that the community can get a head start on updating their stuff. However, this update adjusts the GUI in almost every screen, so it's more likely to break mods than previous ones. If you rely on mods that are broken by this update, you can load the previous version of the game by right-clicking the game in Steam, going to Properties, choosing Betas, and then choosing the "last_update" beta branch. But please hop on the newest version as soon as you can!

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[h2]Ultrawide![/h2]

Firstly, We've added support for 21:9 resolutions! This was more work than you might think because most of Trombone Champ's user interface is made of tons of 2D artwork that was arranged to fit a 16:9 window. If you widened the screen before this update, there was usually nothing at all in the extra space to the left and right!



During gameplay, backgrounds are currently letterboxed to the middle of the screen. In the future, we might add options to stretch or zoom the backgrounds (although it will look bad). But there are lots of other tweaks: the GUI fits nicely into the corners, the tromboner is shifted to the right, etc.




As we adjusted the GUI for 21:9, we usually ended up breaking the 16:10 display. So, when we were done with 21:9, we went through the screens a second time to make 16:10 work again. In a lot of cases, 16:10 should actually look a bit nicer than it did previously!

Do we plan to support 32:9? Probably not, sorry! We'd need to add a ton of artwork to each scene in order to fill the screen, which is a lot of overhead to benefit a very very small number of players.

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[h2]Custom Track Errors![/h2]

The game now displays error messages if custom tracks fail to load. If you have any problems with custom tracks — such as duplicate tracks, tracks that are missing required files, etc — this should help you troubleshoot them!

(Ideally you shouldn't have any errors at all. But now that Steam Workshop is online, it's definitely easier to bump into some of these problems...)



If any of your custom tracks can't be loaded, error messages should appear as soon as the game starts. You can also review these errors in Settings -> Customs.



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[h2]More stuff![/h2]

There are a handful of other tweaks and improvements in this version:

• Some storyline cinematics have been tweaked to make stuff look better & to make the sequence of events easier to follow.
  
• The mute button in the Track Select screen has been expanded to provide additional Amazing Muting Options.
  
• Default track collection has been changed to "All" for users with custom tracks (only if the user has never clicked the track collection button).
  
• Added support for difficulties over 10 (although we don't recommend giving tracks difficulties over 10).
  
• The game now prevents tracks with duplicate "track tags" from being loaded.
  
• When packaging a custom track in the Tootmaker, the game now checks to see if the track tag is a duplicate and throws an error message if it is.
  
• Bugfix: fixed issue where the Help & View Waveform buttons were hidden in Tootmaker.
  

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[h2]What's Next for Trombone Champ in 2025[/h2]

We've starting working on our next game (unannounced), but we have more Trombone Champ stuff in the pipeline. In addition to a handful of new tracks we plan to release later this year, our biggest priorities at the moment are patching the Nintendo Switch version and improving controller support on the Steam version so the game plays better on Steam Deck.

Here's where we are:



We hope you enjoy this update... Stay tuned for more!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Today, we're pushing a tiny update for Trombone Champ, which updates it to 1.26G!

Mod compatibility with 1.26G
This is a very small update, so we don't expect it to break anything that wasn't broken in 1.26F. But, if you rely on mods that are broken by this update, you can load the previous version of the game by right-clicking the game in Steam, going to Properties, choosing Betas, and then choosing the "last_update" beta branch. But please hop on the newest version as soon as you can!

Fixes:

• Fixed issue where "The Trombone Champ Collection" tooltip would appear in the Track Select screen when starting a new game and forced to play "Warm-Up."
  
• Added some additional code to the Steam Workshop uploader that should attempt to auto-delete a Workshop item if the upload fails. Previously, failed uploads could result in a blank item being added to the Workshop.
  
• Added a tiny arrow to the Collections button in Track Select to make it appear more clickable.
  
• Fixed metadata for "Taps" to display the correct song length.
  

Look forward to more updates soon!



Holy Wow Studios

Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.26! This update mainly adds support for custom tracks via Steam Workshop.

[h5]Mod compatibility with 1.26[/h5]

As usual, we've had this update available as a beta for a few weeks so that the community can get a head start on updating their tools. But if you rely on mods that are broken by this update, you can load the previous version of the game by right-clicking the game in Steam, going to Properties, choosing Betas, and then choosing the "last_update" beta branch. But please hop on the newest version as soon as you can!

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[h2]Browse and subscribe to tracks in Steam Workshop![/h2]

You can now browse and subscribe to custom tracks via Steam Workshop! For Steam users, this is probably the easiest way to get started with custom maps. You can view the workshop page here:

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=1059990

After subscribing to items, they should appear in a new "Steam Workshop" collection in the "Track Select" screen. You may need to restart the game, or click the "reload" button in the Custom Tracks section of Settings, to make newly-subscribed tracks show up.



We've personally made two tracks to celebrate the launch of the Workshop, with more to come soon. Vogons is a really fun Max Tundra track, and Item Shopping is a remix of a track from one of our old albums!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3480593643
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3480589806

The community has already uploaded a bunch of tracks to the game's Workshop... and now that the Workshop is public, we anticipate lots of new content soon!

Are you musically inclined?... if so, why not contribute yourself?...


[h2]Upload your tracks to Steam Workshop![/h2]

We've written a guide on how to upload your incredible tracks to Steam Workshop here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3484303312
To summarize, there's a new button in the Tootmaker level editor:



... and when you click the button, you get a popup that should be self-explanatory. All you really need to do is point to a folder, attach a thumbnail image, and click "submit!"



We plan to hold some sort Workshop contest soon, so if you're interested, check it out!

[h3]Other types of content in Workshop?[/h3]

At the moment, you can only upload custom tracks to Steam Workshop. However, we plan to continue experimenting with additional workshop functionality. For example, it would be great if users could upload and download gameplay mods in the workshop! However, this will be a bit trickier to implement since it will involve a lot more tracking and file management than custom tracks do.

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[h2]What's Next for Trombone Champ in 2025[/h2]

We've been pretty busy over here... in addition to Trombone Champ stuff, we've started prototyping our Next Game (unannounced). Gotta make sure it's actually fun to play before diving in! But, in terms of Trombone Champ, here's what we plan to do next:

1. We need to update the Nintendo Switch version of the game to address a few (very minor, visual only) issues with the Switch 2 version. It works great, but a few animations run too quickly!
   
   
2. For PC / Mac, we've started going through a bunch of screens and making them look better in ultrawidescreen resolutions. People have been complaining about this forever and it will be nice to get it done!
   
   
3. We'd like to revisit input. We'd love to have nice controller support, mainly so we can get the game working as smoothly as possible on the Steam Deck. Trombone Champ does work on the Steam Deck, but it doesn't control nearly as nicely as it could. (The game was released at a time when the Steam Deck was heavily backordered — we weren't able to get one until much later!)
   
   
4. We're working on some cool secret stuff that we can't share yet! At the moment, we're not even sure how much of this stuff will pan out!
   
   
5. After that, we're probably done in terms of significant updates, but we'll still continue to support the game, fix bugs, and add new tracks.
   

Thank you for your continued support!!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Hi everyone,

When we put v1.25 live, we expected to find a few bugs after launch. Patch 1.25G fixes a handful of pretty significant ones!

(edit: Whoops! We had another bug pointed out to us, so now the game should be 1.25H instead of 1.25G)

Here's what it does:

• (Fix in 1.25H) Fixed issue where newly-created save slots don't save stuff correctly.
  
• Fixed several small bugs / weird behaviors that can pop up while favoriting & un-favoriting tracks.
  
• Fixed a bug where quitting a custom track before it was finished & and then switching to a default track would cause the track to load incorrectly.
  
• Fixed a condition where the final storyline event could potentially glitch out if the last track played was a custom track.
  

To see what we're working on next (e.g., right now), check out the roadmap at the end of our 1.25 announcement post:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1059990/view/519707981834616835

Enjoy!

Holy Wow Studios


P.S.
We've also disabled the "1.25" beta branch in Steam - there's no need for it now that 1.25 is actually out! It looks like 0.14% of users had this branch active, so if you're one of those, please switch to the default branch 🙏