Trombone Champ: Unflattened is out now, letting you toot your own trombone in VR

I greatly enjoyed tooting with my mouse in Trombone Champ on a flat monitor, but in retrospect it’s the perfect candidate for conversion to virtual reality. It’s small in scope, for one, but also VR would let you see through the eyes of the tooter and slide your trombone note up and down by holding the motion controllers up to your face.

So it is in Trombone Champ: Unflattened, a VR spin-off that’s out now.

Made by Flat2VR Studios, a company that specialises in, as their name suggests, bringing games from flat screens to VR, Unflattened seems like more than a straight re-formatting. The menus are all new, the notes whizz towards you Beat Saber-style, there are cosmetic unlocks for the trombone, and you can unlock and trade cards of famous musicians from throughout history.

The fundamental tooting remains the same, mind you. Trombone Champ: Unflattened is available from Steam and will work with more VR headsets than just the Meta Quest featured in the trailer above. It costs £12.79/€14.79/$15.

It seems unlikely that Unflattened will retain the best thing about the original: the community that surrounds it. Trombone Champ players have organised championship competitions, made custom tracks, and turned those custom tracks into excellent YouTube videos to enjoy whether or not you play the game yourself.