Trombone Champ has tooted its way to the top as the year's best music game

Forget Guitar Hero and the other pretenders, a low budget indie game is taking the internet by storm and has become a massive viral hit.

Back in the noughties you couldn’t move for music games, with everyone trying to copy Guitar Hero with plastic instrument controllers where you button pressed along with the music. The fad didn’t outlast the decade though and now rhythm action games are rare, but that may all change thanks to… Trombone Champ.

The game was released on Steam last week, with no fanfare at all, but now people have had a few days to play it the Steam reviews have already hit ‘Very Positive’ and the game has become a near instant viral hit.

Rather than Guitar Hero, the game most closely resembles the classic Gitaroo Man in terms of gameplay as, alas, it doesn’t come with a plastic trombone controller. Instead, you have to follow the movement of the music with the mouse and tap in time with the musical notes as they snake across the screen.

Your trombone-playing avatar is clearly ‘inspired’ by Wii Music but nobody seems to care that the game isn’t that original because it turns out playing a trombone is a ton of fun, especially as you can play the notes whenever you want and not just when you’re supposed to – which leads to some interesting ‘arrangements’.

Because it’s an ultra low budget indie game there are only 20 tracks and developer Holy Wow can’t afford to licence any big name songs or bands, which is why the main song in the trailer is The Old Gray Mare and not The Beatles back catalogue.

What’s also great about the game is that it’s constantly taking potshots at loot boxes, microtransactions, and the other manipulative parts of modern gaming.

That’s what all the collectible cards are about in the trailer below, which we’re pretty sure is the first time Glen Miller has ever been mentioned in a video game.

There are currently no plans for a console version but that could quickly change given its unexpected success, and then maybe we really will get a plastic trombone to play along with.

Trombone Champ is available now for Windows PCs, at the wallet friendly price of £11.39.

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