Trombone Champ’s developers want to take the game ‘farther than we originally planned’

Holy Wow is a small team, but Trombone Champ’s seemingly overnight success means it can do a lot more.

If your Twitter feed is anything like mine, it’s recently been filled with hilarious videos of the trombone rhythm game Trombone Champ. Much of the silliness comes from players “sliding” the in-game cursor to try and hit the next note, and the resulting songs often turn out to be absolutely ridiculous.

How can you not laugh at this? It’s absurd! And I love the bright-eyed Nintendo Mii-like avatars — they give the game a fun playfulness.

Trombone Champ’s seemingly overnight success means that its developers, Holy Wow Studios, intend to “take the game farther than we originally planned,” they said in a tweet thread on Thursday. That said, Holy Wow expects it will need a few weeks “to get our lives in order and deal with the huge demand this game generated,” so you probably shouldn’t expect radical changes to the game anytime soon. Holy Wow is a “mostly” one-person team, and it’s been developing the game while also holding full-time jobs.

Trombone Champ launched last week for PC via Steam, and it includes more than 20 tracks you can toot along to. Right now, you need a mouse and keyboard to play it (or configure a Steam Deck to use gyro controls, which is my input method of choice), but Holy Wow says support for USB controllers is planned. On Friday, Holy Wow also shared a roadmap teasing features like improved accessibility options and more songs, but it’s unclear if that roadmap has changed in light of the game’s sudden popularity.

Personally, I’m just happy this game exists at all. I played drums and percussion throughout school, but I always wanted to try the trombone; with Trombone Champ, I can fulfill my trombone dreams in what may be one of the silliest games of the year. If you want to check it out for yourself, it’s $15 on Steam.