Bus Bound Review

A blend of bus driving simulator with arcade-like unlocks and a ‘good vibes’ goal of renovating city districts one by one. Bus Bound is not your average simulator, with developer stillalive studios taking a more people focused approach to what it means to bus passengers day to day.

We start off with a tutorial as we’re introduced as the new bus driver hired by the transport company (of a name we choose) and we’re in the driver’s seat right away, as we travel into Emberville proper to pick up our very first passengers. We learn the basics of steering, indication, parking, letting passengers on, and getting a feel for the more realistic traffic flow in Bus Bound.

The vehicles in the game don’t rigidly follow the roads all travelling at the same speeds, as stillalive has gone out of their way to add a pinch of natural chaos into the mix with cars at variable speeds, and even favoring sides of a lane. They haven’t gone full Grand Theft Auto, with cars able to freak out and manically drive, but they have made them behave more realistically as people do. Ironically with the rise of self driving vehicles, most real traffic may end up like NPCs behind the wheel.

In a way this is where the simulation sorta ends because outside of driving your chosen bus, obeying (hopefully) traffic laws, and minding traffic on the roads, you’re not actually keeping your eye on much else like most simulators in the genre. There is no financial spreadsheet to sweat over, hoping income staves off expenditure, as there isn’t any currency in the game. What you do have instead are ‘likes’, which you receive when you pick up passengers from a bus route stop.

That’s right, there is no bus fare you’ll be collecting. The city of Emberville offers free public transport, and that means the city will monitor likes you receive and then compensate the bus company. As there is no currency, all this is dealt abstractly in the background. Instead your focus is solely on those likes, and you’re going to need an awful lot of them if you want to achieve the true goal of Bus Bound, and that is the transformation of the entire city.

The arcade like element to Bus Bound is going through the menu and city map back at the bus depot, because it’s here you’ll see what parts of Emberville are unlocked and ready for you to drive bus routes through. You’ll also see plenty of bus stops not yet unlocked, as well as bridges requiring certain conditions be met before their road works are completed and you get access to more of the city. Individual bus stops are the key to every district as once you unlock them they tend to cause a snowball effect of giving you access to the others you’ll need to upgrade bus routes.

The map lets you pick which default bus routes you’d like to run, or even create your own from scratch. As you unlock new bus stops you’ll be able to edit existing routes to include these new stops, as otherwise you’d never pick up passengers from them, earn likes, and unlock more rewards. Aside from directly adding stops to a route you can also place waypoints to help steer the route as it connects between stops.

The route planner is your go-to tool for reaching every stop and helping you try new combinations for better efficiency. Be warned though as using the same bus stop across multiple routes decreases passengers, though this can be offset by upgrading bus stops, and even the district, as more passengers will flock to already completed stops so they’re still highly useful.

The big goals are the districts themselves and they require all bus stops within them respectively to be unlocked, and then the city will upgrade that district. Helping achieve this goal overall is the blessing and curse of the like multiplier. This is solely dependent on your bus driving skills, so it’s back to the driving sim portion of Bus Bound. Provided you’re obeying traffic laws and making good time you’ll see and hear compliments from your passengers, but if you run red lights, don’t stop at a stop sign, mount the curb, or hit another vehicle, then you’ll see that multiplier take a nasty hit. You’re going to need that multiplier if you want to stand a chance of unlocking everything Bus Bound has to offer, which includes passive perks and changes to gameplay.

Different buses offer a range of passenger capacities and there are plenty to unlock across the map as you go along. They can be customised too but you’ll be welded to the driver’s seat so it’s hard to admire them too much, though you can switch between first and third-person views when driving. You can also take a relaxing free roam drive around Emberville.

It’s also not just the traffic you’ll be watching out for as you can work during the day or night, in various weather and there’s always the chance of random road works or even an accident blocking your route. It helps keep things from becoming too predictable and provides genuine hazards to your precious likes multiplier.

The good vibes part in Bus Bound comes from the game’s narrative of how and why you’re even doing all this in the fictional city of Emberville. It’s also how they explain your company has the monopoly on bus transport, that there are no bus fares, and to coax you into wanting to breathe new life into the city as you help transform the districts.

What does a transformed (or upgraded) district do? Well, they have set pieces or main attractions that undergo a renovation to visually mark your progress, but the road networks themselves become more pedestrianised and are more friendly to buses too, with changes to road traffic since the people of Emberville are being won over by public transport. As mentioned earlier, they also give tangible benefits such as providing a wealth of passengers you can include in other routes.

A pleasant surprise is how good the in-game radio and music selection is, helping capture the Americana theme of the city and adding more to that ‘good vibes’ backdrop to Bus Bound. You’re also gonna hear automated announcements inside the bus for upcoming stops, and great sounding weather like the rain pounding against the bus and its windows. You can also hear the thrum of the city around you and driving past interesting spots in the city can usually be heard as you roll by.

Multiplayer is available for those who’d like to team up and tackle multiple different routes across Emberville, as it supports up to four players with those invited helping to boost the host’s needed contributions of likes.

All these elements come together with driving the bus the core of the simulator, as it should be, but the reason behind setting off on your route isn’t to keep the company afloat, crush the competition or just turn your blinkers on and off at each stop; it’s to feel like you’re making a difference on the city.

There’s a very convenient candy trail of unlocks, upgrades, and perks along the way to keep you on the path, but ultimately Bus Bound is a much lighter bus driving simulator. It prefers the joy of the drive and gradually improving the roads and landscape around you, in what it hopes is convincing enough city life for you to want to transform it.