Published 29/12/2022

Trombone Champ

First impressions can do a lot when it comes to video games. When reviews, impressions, and the inevitable slew of articles came out regarding the release of Trombone Champ, I kind of wrote it off. I mean, it seemed fun, I won’t make any claims to the contrary. But it just seemed to fall into that category of games I’ve never really gelled with - ‘meme games’. Games like Five Nights at Freddy’s, or Slender, or stuff like that. Games that feel like they’re designed just to get a bunch of eyeballs and reaction videos on YouTube. So whilst I was mildly entertained by a couple of the videos I saw, Trombone Champ kind of passed me by. Of course, me being me, and the Youtube Algorithm being a contentious bastard, I eventually stumbled upon a few videos of people’s custom song maps, and after seeing a fantastic rendition of Toto’s Africa - and with a bit of help from Steam’s Autumn sale - decided to just buy in and see what all the hubbub is about. In some ways, I got exactly what I expected - stupid Tactical Trombone Action - but in others… man, I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t Toots, Turds and Baboons.

Trombone Champ is ostensibly a rhythm game controlled with mouse and keyboard. Easy, right? Moving the mouse vertically up or down will change the pitch of the player’s trombone, and simply clicking or tapping a key to play notes. Honestly, its basic gameplay is pretty on brand for a rhythm game - notes will scroll horizontally, requiring you to click and tap in rapid succession to perform some simulacrum of playing a trombone. No, this isn’t Spider-Man; playing Trombone Champ won’t make you *feel* like a tromboner, but it’ll make you giggle from the word Tromboner more than a few times. Anyway, whilst the game doesn’t have any truly defined goals in it’s moment-to-moment gameplay, you are ranked on your performance in each song from the tried-and-true C to S ranking system, and to delve into some of the game’s… stranger mysteries, you will need to grab a handful of S Ranks. At first, considering how high the learning curve, for lack of a better term, is for this game, I thought this’d be much harder to pull off, but you can easily grind those out on some of the easiest songs in the game without much effort.

Whilst the control method is pretty simple, I did quickly find it almost puts a time limit on how long you play the game. No matter if you only play by clicking the mouse, or use a hybrid-style, like me, of mouse and keyboard, the strain quickly became apparent, forcing me to take a break after only a handful of songs. The devs do plan to add additional control schemes, including controller support which may help with avoiding the strain on your wrist and/or fingers.

The thing is, Trombone Champ is kinda janky. The pace of most of the songs are somewhat blistering, requiring a decent handle to actually land the notes, but I’d honestly say succeeding at Trombone Champ is the least important part of Trombone Champ. Simply put, actually hitting all the notes on Star Spangled Banner or Skip to my Lou makes the songs pretty funny - screwing up half the notes, having the pitch just that little bit wrong or just being unable to keep up with the pace is hilarious. There absolutely is a path to getting good at this game - even in my relatively short time with the game I felt myself improve at all but the hardest songs in the game - but for those with a little worse hand-eye coordination or are just terrible (like me) at rhythm games, don’t worry. You can’t lose at Trombone Champ, and in many cases, screwing up is just as funny as doing well. Seriously, I’ve listened to people using tool-assistance to perfect the hardest song in the game - that song is not meant to be heard correctly. It’s designed to sound like a mess, and that’s kind of the beauty of the game in a nutshell.

The selection of songs cooked into the game - still continually being updated by the devs - mostly consists of well-known royalty-free tracks. Think songs like Canada’s national anthem, or classics like Auld Lang Syne and Ode to Joy. These are almost uniformly recognizable tunes - perhaps more so in America - and when one is getting to grips with Trombone Champ’s initially unwieldy control scheme knowing vaguely the flow of a song helps the player learn immensely, opening you up to try and properly learn the original songs in the game, such as the ever-so-iconic title Baboons! Which reminds me, every song included with the game has its own unique music-video-esque background, and perhaps the largest obstacle to doing well in this game is not trying to cackle your head off at some of these insane videos. Few things have me burst out into a fit of giggles then playing the American anthem, only for the final, triumphant notes to be met with the most stereotypical American burger I’ve ever seen. On that note, I challenge you to play the Baboons song without laughing, especially when *those* images pop up. It’s impossible, that’s a scientific fact.

Ah, Baboons. Is there truly a better segue? Real Tromboners will know what I mean. Moving on from that bizarre non-sequitur, there is more to Trombone Champ than just playing the Trombone, oh no. You see, whilst Trombone Champ is an enjoyable, if not spectacular, rhythm game in its own right, the framing device, so to speak, is one of the most stupidly, funnily insane things I’ve played all year. Upon booting the game I expected to just have the rhythm game itself to play around with… instead, I’m treated to the most earnestly silly parody of goddamn Dark Souls of all things, complete with eerie narration and descriptions of deep lore that don’t remotely make sense. So, uh, just like Dark Souls. And whilst following this odd opening is just the game itself, what quickly appears to be just a throwaway joke of an intro quickly turns into a bizarre meta-story that is as incoherent as it is funny. Completing songs will earn you ‘Toots’, which can be used to purchase packs of collectible cards. These cards can be destroyed to earn Turds, which can be then used to craft specific cards - featuring some of the grossest audio of the year - rather than relying on randomized card packs. As an early goal, it’s fun to fill out these cards and read their stupid little descriptions - hearing about how Hot Dogs raise your power level or Trazom (a color-inverted version of Mozart) being the guardian between Toots and Turds - gave me that timeless reaction of saying ‘this is stupid’, followed by me giggling like a little idiot.

At first, I thought these weirder elements were just there for a laugh, much like the Dark Souls-esque intro. The cards didn’t seem to do anything, there’s a weird ‘Baboon’ menu with a silhouetted instrument, and there are a lot of locked character options without any real indication of how to actually unlock them. Slowly though, you’ll find yourself exploring these weird features; the collectible cards dialogue, whilst stupidly witty, imply a lot of silly lore about the universe of Trombone Champ. I won’t spoil exactly what plays out, but the people you’ll meet, and the writing of these extended tasks genuinely had me giggling like a toddler. It is perhaps more than a little too out of the way to reach the game’s true ending - as crazy it is to give a game like Trombone Champ a ‘true ending - whilst I eventually worked out a few of the ways to progress with unlocks, I had to look up a few things to actually reach the ending. But I digress - It’s completely insane and incredibly unexpected - but god, it’s almost the best thing about the game.

And on that note, the best thing about the game is the element that actually pulled me in. You see, the developers, intentionally or not, have made Trombone Champ excessively easy to mod, leading to literally thousands of custom tracks being created for the game; already I’ve played the classic hit Chasing Cars, incredible boss themes like Pledge of Demon from Yakuza 0, or Rules of Nature from Metal Gear Revengeance - hell, I’ve even played a recreation of ‘We’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard!’ from what feels like decades ago. Just about every song converted into the echoing, innately silly sound font of Trombone Champ somehow manages to blend the borders of being both increasingly, enjoyably silly and when applicable, a genuine banger. Seriously, you haven’t heard Rules of Nature if you haven’t heard it from a Trombone. Getting the songs into your game is a breeze, and I think this element is what will be bringing me back to Trombone Champ again and again - there is a constant stream of creative recreations being made over on Reddit and Discord, and it makes Trombone Champ the kind of game where I think I’ll be dropping in every month or so, downloading a ton of songs and just going wild.

Trombone Champ is one of the few ‘flavor-of-the-month’ games that I’ve honestly really felt engaged with. An incredibly simple yet satisfying premise, twisting iconic mainstays of music history into silly giggle fests. This, coupled with its bizarre meta-narrative and total insistence on being as weird as possible, Trombone Champ just works for me on a level viral games generally don’t. Even as I write this right now I get the urge to play the custom version of Remix 10 from Rhythm Heaven, or try and grind out some S Ranks from the original catalog. Honestly, Trombone Champ is one of those games where you can just boot up a video on YouTube and you’ll instantly know if this is a rhythm game worth trying. I could’ve opened with that, but then you wouldn’t have read my review, huh? Well too bad!