How Trombone Champ Evolved from an Inside Joke to a Viral Success

ign.com:

Combine the dramatic story of Dark Souls (if it had baboons in it), the gameplay of Guitar Hero (if Guitar Hero was drunk, and played with a single button), the card collecting of The Witcher 3 (if the cards were chiefly of dead composers), and you might get a game akin to Trombone Champ. What began as just a single, funny idea from husband-and-wife development team Holy Wow Studios has become 2022’s most hilarious game, created with a simple philosophy: 'If it’s funny, it goes in.'

Trombone Champ is a rhythm game that has players – in its own words – “honk, blow, and toot” their way through more than 20 songs as they attempt to solve the mysteries of the Trombiverse and collect Tromboner Cards as they go. It’s ridiculous, and creator Dan Vecchitto knows it.

“My ethos for this game was: if it's a funny idea, do it,” Vecchitto told IGN. “I didn't let standard rules of game design or common sense inhibit the comedy. I let the game gradually grow into a big sloppy pile of jokes: lots of poop jokes, lots of inexplicable baboon references, and lots of parodies of other games.”

But where did the idea for a trombone-based rhythm game come from? Again, a joke. “I originally imagined Trombone Champ as an arcade game, where the player used a huge, rubber trombone controller and attempted to desperately play along with squiggly note lines,” Vecchitto said, but “at that point, it was nothing more than a funny mental image.”

It wasn’t until later he imagined using a mouse to emulate the motion of playing a trombone, and from there Vecchitto created a prototype that was almost as funny as he imagined. “I decided that it was a solid idea and worth developing into a full game,” he said.

Holy Wow had made games before, but these were all