Announcing Trombone Champ's First DLCs!
This holiday season, we're thrilled to announce the first official DLC packs for Trombone Champ: UNDERTALE + DELTARUNE, Celeste, and Pizza Tower! It's like a Christmas present from us to you, except you need to buy it with your own money! Anyway, all three DLCs are available right now!
Combined, these 3 song packs contain 34 tracks, which is significantly more than Trombone Champ had when it launched! It's a big chunk of content, and we've been very busy putting these DLCs together for the past few months. It's truly an honor to have these games represented in Trombone Champ, and we worked hard to do them justice!
That being said, let's dive into them...
[hr][/hr][h2]DLC 1: UNDERTALE + DELTARUNE Song Pack[/h2]
↪ See the UNDERTALE + DELTARUNE Song Pack on Steam!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Playing UNDERTALE or any of the DELTARUNE games means stopping every 4 minutes to say: "why is this song for this one \[battle / scene / location] so good?" There's an astronomical amount of amazing music in these games, and the soundtracks literally contain hundreds of songs, so it was really difficult to narrow it down to 7 from UNDERTALE and 7 from the various DELTARUNE chapters.
Be warned: this is a really difficult collection of songs! The most popular tracks from the soundtracks tend to be ridiculously fast and complex. These are really dense pieces of music, which is unbelievable when you think about how much music Toby Fox wrote for these games!
A smaller version of this DLC pack has been available for the VR version of the game for a while. Apologies for the delay: we had some contractual kinks to work out!
Also, if you like the UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE soundtracks, consider buying them on Bandcamp! Literally hundreds of songs! https://tobyfox.bandcamp.com/album/undertale-soundtrack
[hr][/hr][h2]DLC 2: Celeste Song Pack[/h2]
↪ See the Celeste Song Pack on Steam!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Dear lord is this is a beautiful soundtrack! It's one thing to "write a bunch of cool songs" for a game, and it's another to create a true soundtrack, where the songwriting feels like it was designed hand-in-hand with the game itself. Of the three DLC song packs, this is the one most likely to make you weep at your desk.
The Celeste Song Pack contains less tracks than the other DLCs, but the total playtime is approximately the same because the tracks are a lot longer. A lot of the tracks from the original soundtrack release are very long—the original “Reach For The Summit” is 11 minutes! So, before we could even start making these into Trombone Champ tracks, we had to start by carefully editing the songs down to a playable length. But we're glad we spent the time on it, because this is probably the largest collection of Celeste songs available as DLC for any music game out there.
Before you complain: sorry, yes, we know that all of these tracks are from the "Original" soundtrack, and therefore none of the beloved B-sides are represented in this DLC. Legally, the B-sides are a separate album, which would require another contract to acquire. But we love Celeste, so unless this DLC sells zero copies for some reason, we'd love to make a second B-sides pack at some point in the near future.
Finally: if you're into Celeste, check out the rest of Lena's discography! There's a lot of amazing stuff here beyond the Celeste soundtrack! https://radicaldreamland.bandcamp.com/
[hr][/hr][h2]DLC 3: Pizza Tower Song Pack[/h2]
↪ See the Pizza Tower Song Pack on Steam!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The official Pizza Tower Soundtrack is 73 tracks long, and an unbelievable number of them are absolute bangers. It took a long time to decide which tracks to include, and there are still tons of tracks that cause us immense pain to have skipped.
All of the Pizza Tower tracks are fast and insane, and they fit Trombone Champ extremely well. "It's Pizza Time" is so much fun to play that it's hard to believe it wasn't written for Trombone Champ.
We also got to use some neat Trombone Champ-specific functionality in these tracks: "Put on a Show" contains really subtle pitch bends, and some segments of "Unexpectancy Pt. 2" are charted out-of-tune to match the samples used in the song.
Also, as a warning: like the UNDERTALE + DELTARUNE Song Pack, this is also a really difficult set of songs! But we imagine that the type of player who enjoys both Trombone Champ & Pizza Tower will enjoy the challenge.
Fun fact: if you purchase this song pack, your copy of Trombone Champ will contain two remixes of "Funiculi Funicula." As far as we know, Trombone Champ is the only game in history that contains multiple artists' interpretations of "Funiculi Funicula," which is the greatest honor imaginable.
Also, if you like the Pizza Tower Soundtrack, you should grab the album here:
https://ronandecastel.bandcamp.com/album/pizza-tower-soundtrack
... And don't sleep on the rest of ClascyJitto's discography, which you can find here:
https://rizi.bandcamp.com/
... and here (we love this album):
https://fakenumberland.bandcamp.com/album/sound-of-feeling
[hr][/hr][h2]Accessing the DLC[/h2]
If you purchase a DLC Song Pack, it should simply appear as a new "Collection" in the lower-right hand corner of the Track Select screen.
If the DLC does not appear:
[hr][/hr][h2]On DLCs in general[/h2]
Trombone Champ has been out for three years, which is pretty late to start releasing DLC. We waited this long for a few reasons:
Firstly, in general, it feels a little scummy to charge for content if the base game itself obviously needs a lot of work. Trombone Champ launched in a pretty janky state, and we definitely wouldn't have felt comfortable releasing DLC at that time. But, by this point, we've added a billion features, more than tripled the number of songs that are included with the base game, and are pretty close to what we feel is a "finished product" that we're totally happy with. So, we feel like we're at a stage where we can release DLC without feeling too guilty about it.
Secondly, we weren't sure what would make a good first DLC. We've had a few ideas, but they all fell through: either due to licensing woes (you likely have no idea how horrible this process is), or because they just didn't "feel right" for Trombone Champ.
Huge thanks to Flat2VR Studios, who manage the VR version of Trombone Champ, as they're the ones who really got the ball rolling with UNDERTALE + DELTARUNE. Once we started talking to Materia Collective, it was pretty obvious that these three soundtracks fit perfectly: a celebration of indie games in Trombone Champ!
Thirdly, we're confident that these DLCs rule and are worth the money. A lot of music games charge approximately $2.00 per song. These packs are priced at $7.99 and contain between 10 and 14 tracks, which is approximately 3X the content per dollar.
[hr][/hr][h2]Other Stuff in Update 1.29[/h2]
The vast majority of our work has been in building the DLC song packs and updating the game to support them, but there's some other stuff in the update as well. Here's the changelog:
[hr][/hr][h2]What's Next for Trombone Champ?[/h2]
We'd intended for our next update to improve on input - better native support for gamepads and controllers, with the goal of getting the game working more smoothly on Steam Deck out of the box. However, once we decided on a December release date for these DLC packs, we had to pause the input work.
That being said: input is definitely what we're going to focus on next for the Steam version! Although we'll also be working to get this DLC available on the Nintendo Switch ASAP.
Thanks for playing! Hope to share more stuff soon! Enjoy the holidays!
Forever in your service,
Holy Wow Studios
Please note: all three DLCs require v1.29 of the base game, which just launched yesterday!! So, you might need to restart Steam in order to get that update first!
Combined, these 3 song packs contain 34 tracks, which is significantly more than Trombone Champ had when it launched! It's a big chunk of content, and we've been very busy putting these DLCs together for the past few months. It's truly an honor to have these games represented in Trombone Champ, and we worked hard to do them justice!
That being said, let's dive into them...
[hr][/hr][h2]DLC 1: UNDERTALE + DELTARUNE Song Pack[/h2]
↪ See the UNDERTALE + DELTARUNE Song Pack on Steam!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Playing UNDERTALE or any of the DELTARUNE games means stopping every 4 minutes to say: "why is this song for this one \[battle / scene / location] so good?" There's an astronomical amount of amazing music in these games, and the soundtracks literally contain hundreds of songs, so it was really difficult to narrow it down to 7 from UNDERTALE and 7 from the various DELTARUNE chapters.
Be warned: this is a really difficult collection of songs! The most popular tracks from the soundtracks tend to be ridiculously fast and complex. These are really dense pieces of music, which is unbelievable when you think about how much music Toby Fox wrote for these games!
A smaller version of this DLC pack has been available for the VR version of the game for a while. Apologies for the delay: we had some contractual kinks to work out!
Also, if you like the UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE soundtracks, consider buying them on Bandcamp! Literally hundreds of songs! https://tobyfox.bandcamp.com/album/undertale-soundtrack
[hr][/hr][h2]DLC 2: Celeste Song Pack[/h2]
↪ See the Celeste Song Pack on Steam!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Dear lord is this is a beautiful soundtrack! It's one thing to "write a bunch of cool songs" for a game, and it's another to create a true soundtrack, where the songwriting feels like it was designed hand-in-hand with the game itself. Of the three DLC song packs, this is the one most likely to make you weep at your desk.
The Celeste Song Pack contains less tracks than the other DLCs, but the total playtime is approximately the same because the tracks are a lot longer. A lot of the tracks from the original soundtrack release are very long—the original “Reach For The Summit” is 11 minutes! So, before we could even start making these into Trombone Champ tracks, we had to start by carefully editing the songs down to a playable length. But we're glad we spent the time on it, because this is probably the largest collection of Celeste songs available as DLC for any music game out there.
Before you complain: sorry, yes, we know that all of these tracks are from the "Original" soundtrack, and therefore none of the beloved B-sides are represented in this DLC. Legally, the B-sides are a separate album, which would require another contract to acquire. But we love Celeste, so unless this DLC sells zero copies for some reason, we'd love to make a second B-sides pack at some point in the near future.
Finally: if you're into Celeste, check out the rest of Lena's discography! There's a lot of amazing stuff here beyond the Celeste soundtrack! https://radicaldreamland.bandcamp.com/
[hr][/hr][h2]DLC 3: Pizza Tower Song Pack[/h2]
↪ See the Pizza Tower Song Pack on Steam!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The official Pizza Tower Soundtrack is 73 tracks long, and an unbelievable number of them are absolute bangers. It took a long time to decide which tracks to include, and there are still tons of tracks that cause us immense pain to have skipped.
All of the Pizza Tower tracks are fast and insane, and they fit Trombone Champ extremely well. "It's Pizza Time" is so much fun to play that it's hard to believe it wasn't written for Trombone Champ.
We also got to use some neat Trombone Champ-specific functionality in these tracks: "Put on a Show" contains really subtle pitch bends, and some segments of "Unexpectancy Pt. 2" are charted out-of-tune to match the samples used in the song.
Also, as a warning: like the UNDERTALE + DELTARUNE Song Pack, this is also a really difficult set of songs! But we imagine that the type of player who enjoys both Trombone Champ & Pizza Tower will enjoy the challenge.
Fun fact: if you purchase this song pack, your copy of Trombone Champ will contain two remixes of "Funiculi Funicula." As far as we know, Trombone Champ is the only game in history that contains multiple artists' interpretations of "Funiculi Funicula," which is the greatest honor imaginable.
Also, if you like the Pizza Tower Soundtrack, you should grab the album here:
https://ronandecastel.bandcamp.com/album/pizza-tower-soundtrack
... And don't sleep on the rest of ClascyJitto's discography, which you can find here:
https://rizi.bandcamp.com/
... and here (we love this album):
https://fakenumberland.bandcamp.com/album/sound-of-feeling
[hr][/hr][h2]Accessing the DLC[/h2]
If you purchase a DLC Song Pack, it should simply appear as a new "Collection" in the lower-right hand corner of the Track Select screen.
If the DLC does not appear:
- Try restarting Steam: the DLC may not have downloaded yet, or you may not have received the Trombone Champ 1.29 update yet.
- Make sure you've played at least one track, because the Collections button doesn't appear until after you've completed Warm-Up.
- It's possible that some mods may interfere with loading the DLC collections. If you're a mod user, try playing the game without mods until the mods receive updates.
[hr][/hr][h2]On DLCs in general[/h2]
Trombone Champ has been out for three years, which is pretty late to start releasing DLC. We waited this long for a few reasons:
Firstly, in general, it feels a little scummy to charge for content if the base game itself obviously needs a lot of work. Trombone Champ launched in a pretty janky state, and we definitely wouldn't have felt comfortable releasing DLC at that time. But, by this point, we've added a billion features, more than tripled the number of songs that are included with the base game, and are pretty close to what we feel is a "finished product" that we're totally happy with. So, we feel like we're at a stage where we can release DLC without feeling too guilty about it.
Secondly, we weren't sure what would make a good first DLC. We've had a few ideas, but they all fell through: either due to licensing woes (you likely have no idea how horrible this process is), or because they just didn't "feel right" for Trombone Champ.
Huge thanks to Flat2VR Studios, who manage the VR version of Trombone Champ, as they're the ones who really got the ball rolling with UNDERTALE + DELTARUNE. Once we started talking to Materia Collective, it was pretty obvious that these three soundtracks fit perfectly: a celebration of indie games in Trombone Champ!
Thirdly, we're confident that these DLCs rule and are worth the money. A lot of music games charge approximately $2.00 per song. These packs are priced at $7.99 and contain between 10 and 14 tracks, which is approximately 3X the content per dollar.
[hr][/hr][h2]Other Stuff in Update 1.29[/h2]
The vast majority of our work has been in building the DLC song packs and updating the game to support them, but there's some other stuff in the update as well. Here's the changelog:
- Tweaked lots of stuff to add support for official DLC song packs.
- Added a shiny "S" badge that appears on top of a collection if you S-rank every song in the collection.
- Lots of small improvements and bugfixes in Tootmaker.
- The Accessibility settings menu has been cleaned up and categorized.
- Fixed issue where you could accidentally click RETRY instead of CONTINUE in the Track Select screen.
- Fixed issue where overlapping music could play if you clicked the Collections button at the right time.
- Fixed issue where rounding errors could cause the track time to contain a negative second: e.g., "4:0-1"
- Fixed issue where "S" would still be visible after deleting scores for a song.
- Adjusted how settings are loaded and accessed during gameplay.
- Adjusted which accessibility settings cause the circular rainbow sprites around "CHAMP" to be hidden.
[hr][/hr][h2]What's Next for Trombone Champ?[/h2]
We'd intended for our next update to improve on input - better native support for gamepads and controllers, with the goal of getting the game working more smoothly on Steam Deck out of the box. However, once we decided on a December release date for these DLC packs, we had to pause the input work.
That being said: input is definitely what we're going to focus on next for the Steam version! Although we'll also be working to get this DLC available on the Nintendo Switch ASAP.
Thanks for playing! Hope to share more stuff soon! Enjoy the holidays!
Forever in your service,
Holy Wow Studios