Thank You Bus Driver is an immaculate, chaotic ride and I can't get enough

I hate to admit it, but Double Fine’s games have largely flown under my radar. I played a tiny bit of Psychonauts here and Brutal Legend there while visiting friends, but that was about it. I’ve admired them from afar for the last several years. (Watching all of PsychOdyssey in a weekend was a transformative experience and I know I’ll get around to playing both of the Psychonauts games one of these days, but I keep pushing that deadline further and further back). 

So for Double Fine’s latest game, Thank You Bus Driver, to catch my attention was a little surprising to me. The art style is right up my alley, but a small, indie roguelike bus driving game just wasn’t something I would have ever thought would pique my interest. Now, after just over 3 hours and collecting more than 1500 Thank Yous, I am so glad that it did. 

Thank You Bus Driver is an incredibly simple game: you clock-in for your day as a bus driver, you go around picking up passengers and dropping them off at the next stop before time runs out. You also enforce the rules that your boss gives you as you progress through your day, and you collect Thank Yous from your riders as payment for getting them where they need to go.

The great news is, these passengers are extremely easy to please. Hell, you don’t even need to get them there safely. You can smash into trash bags, light posts, construction signs, even other motorists, and it's not a problem. However, your patrons will withhold their Thanks Yous for someone clipping their toenails when they’re not supposed to. It’s up to you whether you turn around to deliver a slap to a rule breaker, or throw them off the bus entirely for repeat offenses. Either way, the other passengers will appreciate it. 

As you go along, there will be other little changes from day to day. Before you clock in for each shift, you’ll see what the conditions of the day are. These can range from something like a Night Shift, where things are much darker and your knowledge of the map comes in more handy, to a Trash Day where the giant garbage trucks block your path and blow their horns at you, or a Rainy Day that makes it tough to see too far ahead. Other things, like Dolph Con days, will dictate which commuters you see the most of. This will help to inform you of what types of behaviors you’ll need to look out for. Those pesky dolphins love to talk on the phone, and some of the other passengers might not like that!