Dramatic story of Dark Souls (if baboons are involved), Guitar Hero gameplay (if Guitar Hero was drunk and played with one button), Witcher 3 card collecting (cards mostly dead composer) , and you Might be so Get a game similar to Trombone Champ. What started as just one funny idea from his husband-and-wife team, Holy Wow Studios, has become the funniest game of 2022. This game was created with a simple philosophy: “Anything that’s funny is fine.”
Trombone Champ is a rhythm game where you ‘honk, blow, toot’ over 20 songs while solving the mysteries of the Tromboneverse and collecting trombone cards. It’s ridiculous, and creator Dan Veckitt knows it.
“My mantra for this game was, if you have an interesting idea, do it,” Vecchitto told IGN. “The standard rules and common sense of game design have never held back comedy. There are many parodies of
But where did the idea for a trombone-based rhythm game come from? “I initially envisioned Trombone Champ as an arcade game, where the player used a giant rubber trombone controller and desperately tried to play along with his lines of rippling notes,” he says. says Vecchitto. image. “
It was only later that he imagined using a mouse to emulate the motions of playing a trombone, and from there Vecchitto created a prototype that was almost as interesting as he had envisioned. “We decided it was a solid idea and worth developing into a full game,” he said.
Holy Wow has made games before, but these were all small browser-based titles. Curse of the Chocolate Fountain is a side-scrolling game about chronic diarrhea and bird repellent. Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing is a typing game with fun facts such as “typing was invented by Steve Jobs in January 1984”. the world of typing It’s an episode’s Twin Peaks-inspired sequel that follows. typing partya 2-player local multiplayer spin-off.
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However, Trombone Champ is the team’s first game to be sold as an actual product. However, we expect Vecchitto to be a relatively quick and easy game to make. “This project he thought would be completed in six months, but as is often the case, it turned out to be a lot more work than he expected,” he said.
In the end, it took a total of four years of development, with a few starts and stops along the way. Holy Wow is not a full-time game studio, working nights and weekends apart from his Vecchitto day job as a web designer.
One of the things that extended Trombone Champ’s development was the need for additional hooks to keep people playing beyond the hours of the song. The first to be added is the Trombone Card Mechanic, which allows the player to open packs and collect cards of famous trombone his players such as JJ Johnson, Al Grey, and more. They are also parodies of lootbox systems in other games such as FIFA, as players unlock packs in different ways.
We also took inspiration from other games. “The storyline is a direct parody of the Dark Souls series. I found it interesting because these games are very dark and serious, the exact opposite of the goofy trombone games,” he said Vecchitto. .
While the Trombone Champ is now exploding – and Overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam – Throughout the game’s development, there were only a handful of followers: fans of the comedy from Holly Wow’s previous games. His open playtest period a month before launch sparked the first wave of wider interest, with Holy Wow receiving a wholly unexpected and overwhelming 600 feedback forms. But things really blew up at launch, a complete surprise for Holy Wow.
“I always thought the concept of the game was basically solid. I knew it would have viral appeal,” says Vecchitto. “But realistically, what I expected was a handful of people sharing funny videos and those videos going viral.
“I really didn’t expect the virality to lead to an explosion of interest in the game itself. increase.”
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The future is still a bit uncertain, but Holy Wow promises to work on Trombone Champ for a while instead of moving on to other games. The idea was to update Trombone Champ for a while and then move on, but given the overwhelming response, I’ll probably stick with Trombone Champ for a while.”
A console version may also be released eventually. “I can’t say for certain that Trombone Champ will be coming to consoles, but I can say that he will start pursuing it soon,” he added. Holly Wow will also explore other ways to expand its audience, such as localizing his trombone champ into different languages, but the duo still have a lot to learn.
In terms of what the game deserves, Vecchito said:
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He talks about witchers all day long.
