Trombone Champ: Unflattened

I've spent a lot of time in VR and often I wondered if someone would come with a game that would feel natural fit for it. One flat game I hoped would be ported to VR was Trombone Champ. My dream came true when Flat2VR studio created their first 'flat to virtual reality' game - Trombone Champ: Unflattened.

Gameplay
Trombone Champ: Unflattened is a game simulating playing on a trombone, a musical instrument. In order to play a trombone one needs to hold the instrument in one hand, close to the mouth so one could blow into it, the other moving a slide closer or further to one's face. The further one slides, the lower notes, the closer, the higher notes. Similarly in VR, one hand will hold the instrument close to the face, the other one will use the slide. Instead of blowing into the instrument, a player will need to press and hold any button depending on note length. One cannot hold the button indefinitely as in real life one would lose their breath.

During a song, notes will come towards the player following lines on top of each other. The higher the note, the higher the pitch. The player needs to confirm the note by pressing a trigger and having the slide hand at a matching position once it hits a target line near the player. Notes are evaluated based on timing and pitch and a player will be awarded with a judgment for certain notes/parts and at the end of the song a resulting grade as one would expect from a music game.

Key sounds
A rhythm gamer would say the songs are key sounded and this is what brings the game to the next level - the notes you play, you hear, and that will quickly show you that hitting the exact note is not that easy. Any mistake you make can produce a sound that will make you squirm. This adds makes the game feel very real as you have a control over your virtual trombone.

Lots of content
The game has several modes. There is a Campaign mode that makes you play a series of songs on which you need to reach certain criteria to progress. This way you can unlock more songs and challenges along the way. If a player wants to hop right into playing everything, they can by playing in quick play mode where all songs can be played. There is one more mode, for the hardcore players that mastered their virtual trombone - improvisation mode. Here you can see a bar with lines in front of you and you are free to toot the way you want. A player will be able to toot within two octaves, each line represents a semitone (I wish there was a possibility to transpose).

As for the songs, there's about 50 songs and many of you will recognize majority of them as they are well known classics. Their melodies are (mostly) simple so you can play them from memory. Each song has 3 difficulties - simplified, original and turbo. Simplified difficulty is easier to play but you won't be playing the notes you should be playing if you wanted to play the song on a music instrument. While the simplified songs mostly sound well, I wouldn't suggest playing this difficulty unless you really can't complete a certain challenge. Original is the default difficulty making you play all the notes you should be playing. Turbo mode is the same but sped up.

After playing a song you are rewarded toot currency that you can spend at a store. You buy randomized packs of 4 cards. Collecting certain combination of cards allows you to trade them for a different trombone, that can sound differently. Thankfully you don't need to wait for the RNG gods to give you what you need, once you collect 3 or more of the same card you can trade them for 1 specific card you need.

Look and sound
Trombone Champ looks great, features a lot of fun elements and sounds great. The game is very nicely polished and it is a treat to play.

Verdict 5/5
Trombone Champ: Unflattened is a perfect fit for virtual reality. The game will give you an incentive to play a virtual trombone well as all the toots you make will be heard by anyone listening to you play. You will experience many fun moments and the game is very enjoyable to play. Anyone can play the game as the difficulty ranges from very simple to fairly difficult and beyond hard. There's a lot to explore and completing the campaign is rewarding. Improvisation mode where you can learn how to fully control a virtual trombone is for those with nerves of steel but will become very rewarding once you can play any song you want.

I hope that at some point we will be able to play custom songs but even if that won't be possible, this game is a nearly perfect VR game and I can highly recommended to anyone.