Trombone Champ News

Hello! We're rolling out another small patch today, which should bring the game to v1.28F.

This one really only does two things:

[h3]1. Unity Vulnerability Patch[/h3]

1.28F applies a fix for a vulnerability in the Unity engine that was recently discovered. You can read about that here: https://unity.com/security/sept-2025-01

On our end, we had to upgrade our Unity editor from 2019.4.40f1 to 2019.4.41f1 and rebuild the game. Sometimes, upgrading the editor can be a nightmare (which is why we're still using Unity 2019 in the first place). But luckily, as far as we can tell, going from 2019.4.40 to 2019.4.41 doesn't seem to cause any compatibility issues!


[h3]2. Track Loading Bugfix[/h3]

We recently learned about a bug where the game's "final boss battle" wouldn't load under certain circumstances. When we looked into it, we found an issue with how the Track Select screen stores and manipulates track data. This issue can also make "streamer mode" act weird. Anyways, the issue should now be fixed!

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On PC, this patch should only be around 50mb. For some reason, the patch is a lot larger on Mac, coming in at around 500mb. We don't have a lot of control over this... we just build the game, and then Steam figures out how to update the files. Apologies for the inconvenience!


We have a lot of really cool stuff in progress, and are excited to get back to work now that this patch is out! Thank you for your patience!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Hello! At Holy Wow Studios, we have a proud tradition of shipping each update with at least one bug. We spared no expense with 1.28!

And so, we're rolling out a small patch today, which should bring the game to v1.28E.

Here's what it does:

• Hotfix for bug where "Streamer Mode" would cause the Track Select screen to crash.
  
• Hotfix for Free Improvisation mode.
  
• Fixes to scrollwheel behavior in the Tootmaker.
  
• Input improvements in Tootmaker for Mac devices:
  
  
  • The Command key is now be accepted instead of Control.
    
  • On laptops, you can now scroll horizontally using the trackpad, which feels great!
    

We've been spending a lot of time making charts in the Tootmaker, and after this new patch, doing it on our Mac laptop feels awesome!

Thanks for your patience, and stay tuned for more!

Forever in your service,

Holy Wow Studios

Today, Trombone Champ has been updated to 1.28! This track mainly adds two spooky tracks for Halloween, plus a bonus track! But it does some other stuff too!

[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. 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]New Tracks![/h2]

Firstly, this update adds two tracks for Halloween: "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saëns, and a fun remix of The American Quartet's "The Skeleton Rag!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26eZ2J6h8HE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjJPrt62X20
We originally wanted "The Skeleton Rag" to be in the game for last year's Halloween, but we started work on the track too late and didn't have time to get the update live before the holiday.

We've also added another track for no reason: "Hungarian Dance No. 5" by Brahms! This is an incredible piece of music, and the background art is among our favorites.

(Note: "Hungarian Dance No. 5" is one of the few tracks that was purchased from an audio library, so it's not streaming-safe.)

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[h2]More Stuff![/h2]

Now, when you pause the game, you can adjust basic audio settings. Previously, if you wanted to adjust audio levels, it was super annoying! You'd need to quit the song you were playing, go all the way to the main menu, adjust the sliders, and then load another song to see if it sounded right.



Finally, we made some adjustments to how tracks are loaded in order to support potential DLC later in the year. The game supports two formats: json (custom tracks) and binary (base game tracks). Previously, binary tracks would always look in one specific folder to load their content. Now, binary tracks are much more flexible, and we should be able to drop DLC content into the game easily! Stay tuned for more.

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[h2]Full Changelog:[/h2]

• Three new songs: "Danse Macabre," "The Skeleton Rag (Remix)," and "Hungarian Dance #5!"
  
• Audio settings can now be tweaked in the Pause screen.
  
• In collections of custom tracks, Default sort is now alphabetical.
  
• Added ability to sort tracks by track tag.
  
• Adjusted the logic that checks for duplicate trackrefs when packaging a Tootmaker track.
  
• Bugfix: Fixed issue where default tracks wouldn't initially load when changing languages.
  

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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! Previously, we'd planned to tackle controller stuff for this update. However, our priorities shifted a bit. We've spent a ton of time on the Nintendo Switch update, plus a ton of time on "secret stuff" that we hope to announce around the holiday season!

Here's where we are:



We hope you enjoy this update... Stay tuned for more and thank you for your patience!



Forever in your service,



Holy Wow Studios

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