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# Look Out, I'm The Bus
- URL: https://aftermath.site/bus-bound-demo/
- Published: 2025-10-15T13:57:36.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-10T08:59:25.000Z
- Author: Riley MacLeod
- Tags: Video Games, bus bound, steam, steam next fest, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-11-06 08:18

Let’s get this out of the way, especially if my parents are reading: I *can* drive a car in real life. I *haven’t* in about 15 years, because I live in New York City, and also because an ex-boyfriend convinced me I was bad at it, but I usually say that if there were some emergency that necessitated me operating a motor vehicle, I could do it. Despite what that ex-boyfriend insisted, I recall being a safe and thoroughly serviceable driver, if a little anxious. But I am not anxious in the *Bus Bound* demo: I am confidently terrible at being the bus.

[*Bus Bound*](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2095420/Bus%5FBound/?ref=aftermath.site)*,* whichhas a demo as part of Steam Next Fest, sees you taking passengers around the bus routes of the city of Emberville. Excitingly, bus rides are free for passengers ([it can work!](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/new-york-city-bus-free-fare/?ref=aftermath.site)), with a character telling you that “our funding comes from the city council based on how well our passengers think we’re doing.” As you drive your route and make stops, you get a number of thumbs ups from riders depending on how well you drive; these are used to unlock new busses, bus stops, and routes.

Rather than simply sit back and marvel at their city’s robust free bus service, passengers have a lot of opinions. They like when I roll gently over speed bumps or get them to their destination on time. They don’t like when I slam on the brakes and honk my horn because a cop turning right on red cuts me off. They don’t like when I park too far from the curb. They *really* don’t like when I smash into cars around us because I am a god damn *bus* and a bus is freaking *huge*, its turns way wider than I think and it taking far longer to slow down than I keep planning for. The passengers make their mean little frowns and say their nasty little comments about how they *didn’t ask for bumper cars* or *surprise obstacle course: failed* and I yell “Shut up, I’m the bus!” at them as we all smash around being the bus.

There are a lot of nice touches in *Bus Bound*: you can switch from a view from behind and above the bus to the first-person perspective of the driver easily, which I found helpful for checking if cars are coming but not so helpful for remembering that I am a bus that is the size of a bus. When you put on your turn signal you get a view of your mirrors. You can customize your bus colors in fun ways. Letting passengers on and off is a nice little process of engaging the parking brake, opening the doors, and then doing it all in reverse. The game has weather; in the rain, rivulets obscured my screen until I turned the wipers on, at which point the water didn’t simply vanish but hung around, really feeling like peering through a windshield.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2025/11/busrain-jpeg-w-710.jpg)

It's good rain (stillalive studios/Aftermath)

Emberville itself is fascinating to drive through, absolutely stuffed with shops, billboards, and ads. It would be nice if you could walk around it on foot, because I kept swinging my camera around while driving to check everything out and then forgetting to focus on the road. I would like to be a passenger on my bus, or a bus driven by someone better at being a bus than me, just so I can look out the window at everything. It’s good that the city is a busy place to be; I can imagine the game’s core requirement of driving routes to grind out thumbs ups could get repetitive in the full game.

But I don’t mind the repetition. In driving sims like *Euro Truck 2,* I love the everydayness of doing my chores, driving my routes and listening to the radio and getting to places on time. Even when I drove the same *Bus Bound* route multiple times, I found it satisfying to see the same streets at different times of day, parking a little better or getting a little closer to being on time or staying below the speed limit more often. I didn’t *try* to keep causing massive pileups, or sideswiping pedestrians, or pulling out into traffic without looking. I *wanted* a calm, routine day as the bus–it’s just that the bus is a bus, and this is how busses are.

So I’m not great at being the virtual bus, but I swear I can drive in real life. And unlike the ex-boyfriend who convinced me I couldn’t, *I’ve* never clipped a mail truck while driving an empty school bus without a CDL, so whatever. (We owned a school bus. It's a long story.)