Trombone Champ: Unflattened review — Tootin’ my horn in VR

I can’t play the trombone in real life, nor can I say that I’ve ever really felt the need to, but you can bet that I was excited to step onto the VR stage like a trombone master in Trombone Champ: Unflattened to perform for my sometimes delighted, but mostly disgusted, audience.

Trombone Champ: Unflattened is a port of the critically acclaimed PC and Nintendo Switch game Trombone Champ by Flat2VR Studios, who aim to bring traditionally flat games to VR. But, Trombone Champ: Unflattened is no mere direct port with a few VR tweaks. Flat2VR took the time to really utilize VR in fun and creative ways, while retaining the songs and charm of the original flat game.

In case you’ve somehow missed the Trombone Champ hype train, it is essentially Guitar Hero for the trombone, albeit far more hilarious and you don’t play with a toy trombone. In VR you use both hands to play, with one hand holding onto the trombone, and the other moving toward and away from your mouth to simulate playing low and high notes. Notes pass on either one side or both sides of the screen depending on your settings, with rows helping to indicate whether the note is high or low. To play a note, you simply press the square or X button, while holding in the button will allow for a sustained note. Be careful though! Hold your note too long and you’ll be stuck catching your breath for quite a while as missed notes fly by. It’s a simple concept and one most of us are accustomed to thanks to other rhythm based games, but the charm of Trombone Champ: Unflattened lies in its absurdity.

No matter how well you hit the notes, rarely does any noise you make resemble something an audience would ever pay to witness. That’s the best part, because as you flail about attempting to play increasingly difficult songs not meant to be performed on a trombone, you’ll see the audience react with delight, or disgust, based on how well you are playing. Play good enough and they’ll reward you with cheers, but play bad enough and they’ll begin acting like they just walked into a Taco Bell bathroom. You won’t just have a virtual audience in attendance, as you’ll see a conductor wildly swinging his arms, confetti shooting out of cannons, absurd images rotating across the screen, and sometimes even the lyrics so you can sing along. It’s all hilarious to partake in and can be quite chaotic, while being equally hilarious for those watching.

The better you play, the more toots you’ll earn, which can then be used to purchase packs of cards at the card shop. Each card pack comes with four random cards, which can then be traded to the shop for a new trombone. Each trombone requires two specific cards to unlock, so it does take a few hours to earn enough toots to unlock everything. Thankfully, you can trade cards of which you have three or more duplicates of for another card not currently in your hand, which helps you obtain the cards you just aren’t having luck getting with the blind card pack openings.

The trombones earned are all delightful to look at, often sporting ridiculous themes like a playable cat or rubber chicken, or a trombone made entirely of pool noodles. A few of these trombones also come with a special sound, allowing you to play your notes as cat meows or other various ear-piercing noises, rather than the basic trombone noise. In your trombone closet you can swap between trombones, use spray paint to style your trombone, and choose between special noises or regular noises. It’s all a lot of fun to unlock and mess around with, and provides a good reason to increase your skill and earn more toots.

There is a single player campaign, though without a true storyline. Instead, there are tiers, akin to the venues in Guitar Hero, each with a few songs to perform and challenges to complete. Completing challenges is key to progression, as the next tier of songs will only unlock once you reach a specific number of completed challenges. Challenges range anywhere from completing a song with an S rank, having more perfect notes than nasty notes, maintaining a CHAMP streak by not missing notes, etc. These challenges are the real bread and butter of the gameplay, as they provide the difficulty.

That’s not to say the songs themselves aren’t difficult, but you can never really fail, so the challenges and toots earned are what really push you to continue improving your tooting skills, rather than any fear of failure. If you’re not very good at the game, there’s no need to worry, as you can still complete challenges on the easiest difficulty, and only about half of the challenges need to be completed to unlock the ending of the game. Once you reach the end though, you’ll almost certainly be compelled to clear out the unfinished challenges as they award new trombones and a special ending. This greatly increases the replay value as the core game takes only about 5 hours to complete all 50+ songs included, but completing the challenges will more than double that time investment.

For only $15.00, there’s a lot to love here. Aside from the decently long main campaign, there is also a freeplay mode, which allows you to replay any song in an attempt to make your way up the global leaderboard, and an improv mode, which allows you to toot your trombone uninterrupted and without any goals to complete. If you’re a fan of rhythm games, do yourself a favor and pick up Trombone Champ: Unflattened and toot your heart out tonight.

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