Summerbruise on Infinity Drives: A Fake Emo Simulation Adventure – Interview Series

“Fake Emo” isn’t dead; it’s just hatching from its roots to collaborate with Side One Dummy’s Summerbruise on an all-new browser game titled Infinite Drives: A Fake Emo Adventure. That’s right, folks — you will finally have the opportunity to pull the strings of five touring bandmates in a Tamagotchi-like fashion.  What’s more, the game—a project that was birthed by friend and fledgling game developer, Jared—will be launching alongside the band’s upcoming album, Infinity Guise. So, a two-for-one deal, as it turns out.

Curious to learn more about Summerbruise and their latest venture in the gaming space, I decided to sit down with the band and developer Jared to discuss both Infinity Drives and their debut album, Infinity Guise, ahead of its September 19th launch.

Hi, guys — thanks for taking the time to sit down and speak with us this afternoon. Before we jump into the details of your forthcoming record, would you mind introducing yourself to our readers and telling us a bit about your experience in the music industry?

Mike: Thanks for giving us the chance! For most of the last 10 years, we have been making and releasing music on small independent labels run by our friends, and going on fairly short DIY tours around the midwest and east coast. To that end, our experience in the “music industry” proper really only extends to the last year or two, when we got to go on our first two full US tours and signed with Side One Dummy.

So much has changed over the years and especially the last few, but it has been so fun and rewarding the whole time. We’ve had a lot of luck and privilege on our side at various points, but I think it’s fair to say our experience in the music industry has been positive across the board. Everything we’re doing now is either directly or indirectly thanks to the friends we made playing DIY shows, so it’s pretty nice now to not only see a lot of hard work start to pay off, but also for so much of that so-called hard work to actually be insanely fun the whole time. It’s been pretty sweet. 

Let’s open the book up on Summerbruise. How would you best describe the band? Tell us more about that “fake Emo” sound that you strive to create.

Mike: Fake Emo isn’t a genre, it’s a lifestyle! It’s a joke born from the “real emo” debate, and the absurdity I feel in people’s willingness to have that argument in the first place. I think Emo is useful shorthand for the loose collection of bands that people call Emo nowadays and I consider us one of those for sure, but we are by no means a Real Emo band by any genre purist’s standard. What I really need genre purists to know from the jump though, is that I don’t care.  So I think calling ourselves “Fake Emo” settles that discussion before it even needs to happen.

Disbanding from the studio to explore a browser game is certainly unorthodox, yet it’s also something that we’re excited to see in action. Tell us, why a video game? What inspired you to dig your claws into this world?

Mike: Like every other good thing that’s ever happened to this band, it was a combination of friendship and good fortune. Everyone in the band is hugely into video games in their own right, and shortly after our first few meetings with Phil (from Side One), he mentioned that he’d just recently run into a friend who makes games and wanted to introduce us. As it turns out, Jared was insanely cool and we had a lot in common when it came to what we liked about games, so we were hyped that Phil suggested he make one for the album. It’s been such a blast learning from him about what goes into this sort of endeavor!

Infinity Drives isn’t just a game; it’s also a vessel for your upcoming record, Infinity Guise, right? Could you tell us more about that, as well as how the record will play a role in A Fake Emo Simulation Adventure?

Mike: Yes! So the album isn’t necessarily *about* being in a touring band, but most of the songs take place on tour or are clearly told from the perspective of a touring musician (me lol). The way Jared has the player managing the different physical and emotional needs of the band in the game seems pretty obvious as a surface mechanic for a video game about touring, but really accurately represents how easy it can be to neglect some of those things in the short term without seeing the consequences of that until the long term.

More concretely, the soundtrack for the game features a dozen or so different versions of the album’s opening track that I made in all sorts of different stylings. I’m a *huge* Banjo-Kazooie fan and always loved how each level had a looping main theme that would change timbre and texture contextually depending on what you were doing, so we were aiming for something like that. 

Tell us more about Infinity Drives. What exactly is it, and how will it work? Please could explain the plot to us and, more importantly, how the player will be involved in it?

Jared: Infinity Drives is about being a tour manager for a Midwest-famous fake-emo band where, in between shows on an infinite tour, the player must take care of the band as if they are five helpless little virtual pets. They need food and weed and cell phone and fortnite and every other thing, and they need you to get it for them. You juggle this virtual pet gameplay with low-key first person driving and Oregon Trail-style management and decisionmaking. The shows in between driving segments act essentially as grades for your performance, based on how you’re taking care of the band.

Your goal in the game is to get enough Monthly Listeners to be able to play Fauxchella and face off against malevolent rival band Carpool, who sucks. It’s really inspired by Desert Bus, this slightly cult game about driving in real time between Tucson and Las Vegas. This has more going on, and the idea is that between driving, virtual pet stuff, story pieces, and resource management, this is able to feel bizarrely overwhelming while every individual aspect of it is, by itself, chill.

Could you elaborate on the challenges that players will have to overcome in Infinity Drives? Walk us through a couple of different scenarios, if you’d be so kind.

Jared: The delicate balancing act of: How do you keep your five delicate musicians happy and fed, while also driving? How do you spend your t-shirt money? Do you have enough money for if your 2007 Honda Odyssey gets sick? You know that buying a big bong of weed is way more cost efficient than buying a bunch of jays, but the big bong of weed is huge and is all falling all over the place, obscuring your vision. If you don’t pay attention to your driving you’ll make your band members anxious and carsick, but not meeting their needs (in terms of having what they need and making time to hand it to them while driving) will make them feel like shit in other ways, which will make the shows bad, which will make the buzz worse, which will make attendance worse, which means: no more t-shirt money, and plateaued monthly listeners.

So, what is the next step for Summerbruise? With the game and the record both gearing up to storm the stage later this month, how will you be spending the next quarter?

Mike: Gaming! Aside from that, we’re going on tour for a few weeks in November with Dear Maryanne, Moosecreek Park, and Oolong. 

Is there a way for us to stay up to date with Infinity Drives and Summerbruise? Say, are there any important social handles, podcasts, or upcoming streams that we ought to be taking note of?

We’re @summerbruise69 on everything.

You’ve been brilliant, thank you!

For more information on Summerbruise’s Infinity Drives, be sure to follow the band on X.