Tour of Life: Summer Haze Glory Days
Summer Haze Glory Days is a love letter to the emo and indie music scenes of the 2000s — a story-driven visual novel that blends tour life chaos, creative struggle, and heartfelt character dynamics. We had the pleasure of talking with the creator, Yam, about the personal roots of the game, the challenges of juggling passion and profession, and the process of bringing this nostalgic, emotionally resonant story to life.
Yam: “I originally wanted to write graphic novels, but ended up making visual novels instead after finding out about the medium. This was in part because I liked being able to reuse character art and backgrounds throughout the whole story instead of having to draw every panel from scratch, but mainly so that I could also include features like branching storylines.”
“Making visual novels as a hobby eventually led to me working professionally in the games industry on non-VN games, which I’ve been doing for around five years now. Since visual novels have largely been a side project for me — initially done alongside course work as a student, and then later alongside a full-time job in game development — some of the biggest challenges I’ve had to face are probably time management and trying to avoid creative burn-out.”
Yam: “On a surface level, I’m a Warped Tour era emo/scene kid who misses the days of wearing two studded belts at the same time. Underneath that, though, I wanted to tell a story about the struggles of working in a creative field, the challenges that come with making your passion into a career, and the compromises you might have to make in the pursuit of success.”
“All the bands I’ve been in were mediocre at best, so the specifics in that sense aren’t particularly personal. However, I see the major story themes as being universal to most, if not all, creative industries, and those definitely draw from personal experience.”
Yam: “My favourite is whoever is easiest to write, so either Beckett or Lucas. When creating characters, I like to give most of them a little bit of myself to help me relate to or sympathise with them in some way, and then build them out from there.”
“The amount that I give each character varies, so there are some that are more heavily based on me, and some that might only share one or two superficial similarities with me just so that I have that “entry point” to get into their mindset. Funnily enough, just because a character is more similar to me doesn’t mean they’re easier to write; I would say Lucas is in the “only has superficial similarities” group.”
Yam: “The band members are all friends/acquaintances of the player character who didn’t have much knowledge of each other prior to joining the band, so things are still a little bit awkward between the rest of them when the player character isn’t around. This is exacerbated by the pressures of being on tour and spending so much time together in such tight quarters, so naturally some conflicts will arise.”
Yam: “While Emerson does become a trusted confidant to the player character, his role in the story also to serve as a representation of everything the player character wishes they were: an effortlessly successful and talented musician and songwriter. How the player chooses to interact with him will impact not just the relationship between the two characters, but how the player character feels about things like fame and artistic integrity.”
Yam: “Mal is a bit of an unreliable narrator. They have a tendency to project their insecurities onto others and assume the worst of people or situations at times — in this case, Mal believes that Noah is being condescending towards them. Since you’re playing from their perspective, you might be inclined to think that their impressions are accurate. However, as Beckett — someone who always has Mal’s best interests at heart — doesn’t seem to hold any animosity towards Noah, maybe Mal is actually wrong about how Noah feels about them?”
Yam: “When designing how characters look, I try to think from their perspective about what they’d want to wear, and how much time they’d realistically spend on upkeep (especially since they’re all on the road). For example, Beckett is a practical and laid-back person who wouldn’t be too fussed about appearances, so he’s in gym clothes and not always clean-shaven.”
“Given the setting, there are also quite a few strong 2000s fashion choices — some examples being Di’s layered tank tops paired with the denim miniskirt over cropped leggings, and Gabe’s waistcoat and scarf combo. A little fun fact about the character designs, though: most of them had multiple hairstyle, hair colour, and outfit options that I put up for vote on Patreon or Discord during the very early stages of the game’s development, so the final decisions weren’t usually up to me!”
Yam: “The composer for the game’s soundtrack is Mijael Peralta (@mijael.peralta on Instagram), so my input was just providing the general context and feeling for each song, along with references. Some of the references were emo staples like The Promise Ring’s Nothing Feels Good and Cursive’s Domestica, but some non-emo albums like Interpol’s Turn On the Bright Lights were also included for a bit of variety. The references chosen are a bit older than the setting of the game, which was intentional; I see them being what the player character would have listened to and been inspired by, resulting in the soundtrack.”
Yam: “Honestly, since the setting is a bit niche, I expected the game to have a very small audience mostly made up of people nostalgic for the time period, but this wasn’t the case at all. It was surprising to see that the majority of the player base is actually made up of players who were too young to experience the scene firsthand, some of whom didn’t even have any prior knowledge of or interest in it at all. From what I’ve seen, it does seem like players are looking forward to the full release, so I’m very appreciative of everyone’s interest and patience!”
Yam: “The demo of 8 dates might seem like a huge chunk of the game given that there are only 20 dates listed, but finishing your first playthrough will unlock a New Game+ mode. This New Game+ mode will add multiple side story events per tour date, additional content in the main story events, as well as epilogues for each of the main characters. Once the full game is out, I would recommend players play through twice (one run of the regular New Game mode followed by one run of the New Game+ mode) in order to have a complete experience of the story.”
Yam: “I’d mentioned that the character designs were put up to a vote, so here are the different versions of Di’s design. Her hairstyle, hair colour, outfit, and makeup style were all voted on individually. As an additional behind-the-scenes note, Di is one of the characters that had fairly similar options — she still looks like herself in each of these sketches — while Lucas was a character whose options were so varied that he could have ended up looking like a completely different person.”
Summer Haze Glory Days captures something raw and real — not just about music, but about growing up, chasing dreams, and figuring yourself out along the way. And as final words from the developer, they wish to thank our readers for their interest in their “little Warped Tour period piece game,” and hope you all enjoy playing it once it’s out.
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