Trombone Champ News

Hi everyone! Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.24B - the holiday update for 2024!

This update adds two holiday songs: "Carol of the Bells" and "Hanukkah Oh Hanukkah!" It also adds a "bonus" track: "Puttin' On the Ritz!" All three of these are pretty tricky but a lot of fun!

(We usually include a note here like: "this may break your mods, please check them for updates"... but this update is fairly small and shouldn't break anything.)

[hr][/hr]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBYTz7OjDBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJInjPIGOeg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKk16RCOWjc
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We were originally planning to make this update much bigger... we have tons of updates in progress, and a lot of them are almost ready to roll out. But the past few months have been busy with the launch of Trombone Champ: Unflattened in VR, plus the 9-player typing game we showed at NYU's No Quarter 2024 event. Around mid-November, we realized: "whoops, if we want these holiday tracks released before the holidays, we need to work on getting a smaller patch out the door immediately."

Here's a full list of what's new:

• New Tracks: "Carol of the Bells," "Hanukkah Oh Hanukkah," and "Puttin' On the Ritz!"
  
• When sliding trombone notes, the tone you hear should match the slide much more accurately.
  
• Replaced the logo on the home screen with the official logo used everywhere else.
  
• The game should jump from the Loading screen to the Gameplay screen a bit faster.
  
• OMG! Lots of improvements to the Tootmaker level editor (which is still "secret" for now).
  
• Fixed some conditions that caused the mouse cursor to reappear if the user had activated the Disable Mouse Cursor setting.
  
• Other minor graphical optimizations and tweaks.
  

The second bullet point is a big one! If you haven't noticed, pitch bending has been pretty inaccurate since launch: when you bent a note, the tone you would hear would be slightly off-tune in lots of cases. We found a new solution that works like magic and will probably write a blog post about it. This is one of those things that we're embarrassed to have left in the game for so long.

Before the end of the year, we'll make another post about our 2025 roadmap, but to summarize, we have a few large, fundamental updates we'd like to finish ASAP. In the meantime, happy holidays and thank you for your patience!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Hi everyone!

We're working on the next Trombone Champ update, but as always, it's taking a bit longer than expected. In the meantime, we'd like to highlight a bunch of related Trombone Champ / Holy Wow projects... We sometimes post about these on social media, but haven't really mentioned them in Steam News! Without further ado...

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[h3]Trombone Champ: Unflattened[/h3]

Flat2VR Studios are working hard on the official VR port of Trombone Champ, which we're calling Trombone Champ: Unflattened. This has turned into a much larger & more ambitious game than we were imagining, and we have lots of plans for post-launch content and support. Flat2VR is doing the vast majority of development, but we're helping with a lot of stuff, like art assets, sounds, storyline, writing, ideas, etc. One of the things we like most about this project is that one of the primary developers is Raicuparta, who made the first VR mod for the PC version of the game shortly after it launched! Trombone Champ: Unflattened comes out later this year for Steam, Meta Quest, and PS VR2, so pre-order today!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3151670/Trombone_Champ_Unflattened/



[h3]Trombone Champ: The Card Game Kickstarter[/h3]


Around a year ago, indie board game designer Jason Anarchy approached us and asked if he could prototype a Trombone Champ card game. We told him to go for it, and a few months later, he showed us a prototype via Table Top Simulator. It was really fun! Even as people who play a lot of board / card games, we genuinely had a great time. Jason is currently running a Kickstarter for the game and there are a few stretch goals left to hit... check it out here!

—> Trombone Champ: The Card Game on Kickstarter



[h3]Debuting a New Holy Wow Studios Game at No Quarter 2024[/h3]


We're excited to be taking part of NYU's "No Quarter" event, at the NYU Game Center in Downtown Brooklyn. At No Quarter, a small number of game developers are invited to show a new game. The experience we're developing is very ambitious: a nine-player competitive typing game, with nine keyboards centered around three vertical screens. Every part of the game was designed to be shown in a public space... it should be super fun to play and for others to spectate. Consider stopping by if you're in the New York area!

—> No Quarter 2024 Official Website



[h3]iam8bit Trombone Champ Vinyl Soundtrack[/h3]


Our iam8bit vinyls were briefly sold out, but now they're back in stock! They did an amazing job with the artwork and packaging... these truly look beautiful in person. Once they sell out, they will probably be gone forever, so grab one if you're interested. A handful of these contain a special collectible Tromboner Card like the ones from the game... and a VERY small number of these contain a golden Babi card. It's possible that nobody on earth owns the Babi card yet. We really hope someone finds the golden card and lets us know!!

—> iam8bit | Trombone Champ Vinyl Soundtrack



[h3]Our Etsy Shop[/h3]


We have pins, t-shirts, and stickers available at our Etsy shop! We screenprint the shirts ourselves, basically right next to the computer where we make Trombone Champ. If you're looking for a shirt and the site says we're out of stock, feel free to message us - we may be able to screenprint another batch (we have a box full of blank shirts).

—> Holy Wow Merch World on Etsy


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It blows our mind that Trombone Champ—a game we expected to have "mildly-viral success" at best—is still trucking along in 2024. Thank you all for your amazing support.

For the next game update, we have a lot of stuff in progress: a much-improved level editor, a main menu refresh that lets you actually access the level editor, a whole batch of new tracks, and additions to the level select screen that allow you to choose "collections" of tracks. This "collections" system is probably the largest piece of work... It allows you to browse and play tracks you make yourself, but is also extendable so you can theoretically load it up with multiple collections of tracks. Building this is critical for workshop support, DLC support down the road, etc.

We'd love to get this update in your hands ASAP, but we've been so busy with the stuff listed above that this may end up being a holiday release (we already have two holiday tracks that are almost done). However, we'll release a smaller version of the patch as a beta, so people who are interested can at least try the improved level editor in advance. Thank you for your patience!

Eternally in your service,


Holy Wow Studios

Hi everyone! We pushed a very tiny update today, which does nothing except hide the "Save (Binary)" button in the Tootmaker level editor. This was intended to be hidden. We literally have a checkbox called "enable_developer_features" and left it checked. Whoops! This is the karmic punishment we deserve for making last-minute updates right before setting this version live.

It's not reflected in this hotfix, but we've already have made a LOT of improvements to the level editor since this last version went live... we may push a beta soon that adds a lot of level editor features, so keep your eyes open!

(The next "real" version will add more than level editor features, so keep your eyes open for that too.)

Anyways, apologies for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience... and now, to continue working on the trombone game...

Forever in your service,


Holy Wow Studios

Hi everyone! Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.23E!

⚠️ As usual, this update may require updating some mods! In the meantime, if you need to, you can play the previous version of the game by right-clicking the game in Steam, choosing Properties, clicking the Betas tab, and choosing last_version in the dropdown. But if you do this, please switch back to the newest version whenever you can!

Apologies for the long wait: in addition to spending a *lot* of time on the "Tootmaker," the built-in level editor (more on that below), we've also been helping the folks at Flat2VR Studios with Trombone Champ: Unflattened, the VR port of Trombone Champ that launches later this year. Flat2VR is doing the vast majority of work, but we're helping with lots of art, assets, music, writing, etc.

Anyways, this update adds two tricky new songs: "The Can-Can" and "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2!" These are both pretty fast and difficult! Personally, "Hungarian Rhapsody" is now one of our favorites, with lots of very tricky rhythms and mode changes.

[hr][/hr]https://youtu.be/9o-3brNQOns https://youtu.be/47qsxSRoEJs
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The biggest update here is something slightly hidden: a preview of the work-in-progress Tootmaker level editor! You can find it hidden in the Settings menu (you shouldn't have to look very hard to find it).

The main reason this update took a while is because we worked really hard to make this tool as polished and nice as possible... it takes a long time to put together tools like this!

We think the Tootmaker is a great way to introduce new users to the world of custom content creation. If even one person tries this out on a whim, and has their first experience creating their own content for games, it will all be worth it to us. I certainly have a lot of fond childhood memories hacking together DOOM levels, building maps for Worms Armageddon, etc... the first time you see your own stuff working in a "real" game is a magical experience.

However, if you're a power user or someone with a lot of experience making custom tracks for rhythm games, you will probably be better-served by one of the community-made level editors out there, since those have been out for a while and have tons of features that this one is probably missing.

The next update will hopefully make the experience much more full-featured:

• Updates to the Track Select screen so you can browse and play levels you've created without needing to launch them from the Tootmaker itself.
  
• Adding a proper button for the Tootmaker from the main menu.
  
• Localizing the text (currently it's only in English).
  
• Trying to integrate Steam Workshop so that Tootmaker levels can be freely uploaded and downloaded.
  
• Of course, fixing bugs & adding new features.
  

If you find any bugs with the Tootmaker, or have any suggestions, please leave a comment in the
Tootmaker Steam Discussion thread.

Hope to share more soon... as always, thank you for playing the game and for your continued patience!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Trombone Champ, 2022's funniest PC gaming phenomenon, is getting a snazzy VR version that aims to fully immerse you in fudging your way through Ode to Joy with the world's most inherently comical musical instrument...
Read more.