“Where does Bus Bound fall on the various scales of vehicle simulators?”
It’s more fun that all the others I’ve tried.
“Is it a complete accurate-to-the-last-decal vehicle simulation that in order to enjoy, you basically need a bus licence and a lifelong obsession with bus manufacturers?”
No, but the buses look great and feel responsive and intuitive to drive.
“Is it a casual bus driving game like what Euro Truck Simulator 2 is for lorries?”
It’s more fun and instantly playable than ETS2 and takes itself a bit less seriously. Also, there aren’t a million, bajillion settings to tweak.
“Does it have a management aspect, and if so, how deep does it go?”
I’ve only scratched the surface of that. You develop bus routes and get more and more buses and the more you succeed in getting likes, the more the town itself changes and improves.
“Is it particularly moddable?”
It’s just come out so I don’t know.
“Is it made for wheel-and-pedal players?”
Ah, that I do know! It worked instantly with my Thrustmaster T248 wheel and pedals. The thing is I kind of prefer playing it with my keyboard. Not sure why…

I love that guy! So I guess yeah… good first impression 🤣 and no it’s isn’t GTA5 Bus Driving. It’s just a really nice, not overly complicated bus game. Unlike so many other bus games for me in this one they’ve really nailed the environment. It feels bustling and busy and not like a bad film set. That’s one of the issues I had with Bus Simulator 21. This one’s fun and great looking.

“I really wanted to like this comment but I think the writer has now abandoned it. There have been no updates and I think maybe AI was used for some of it. It also crashed my browser 5 times. I’d ask for a refund but writing this comment took me past the 10 second returns window.”

Joking aside, the problem with the Steam review system is that people tend to read negative reviews before they pay any attention to positive ones. As a result it has turned into a massive platform for review bombers and personal drama sandbox for entitled attention seekers. There isn’t any good faith left in any of it. I’ve learnt to ignore 90% of the reviews now and have ended up playing some excellent games I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Step 1 - Get really excited and wishlist this.

Step 2 - Wait… lots.

Step 3 - Finally it’s available! Go to Steam page reviews and it’s “Mostly Negative” and filled with comments that start with “I really wanted to like this but…” and “Trash”, “Slow, laggy even on my Geforce Quantum Space Folding powered by unicorn tears GFX card”.

No shade on the game which looks awesome but the Steam review system is so badly broken it’s such a bummer.

That is the question… 🤭

The TL;DR is that this is more about some dude wanting to fill time with vague ideas about learning lines that never get smarter than “repeat them a lot” than any actually useful advice.

I’ve done a ton of line learning for plays and musicals and I can tell you there is one actually useful system that never fails. I call it the first letter system. You could learn an entire play with this in very little time. You just reduce your text down to just the first letters. So, for example, Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” 259 word soliloquy would look like this:

T B, O N T B, T I T Q: W 'T N I T M T S T S A A O O F, O T T A A A S O T A B O E T. T D, T S, N M; A B A S T S W E T H-A A T T N S T F I H T: 'T A C D T B W’D. T D, T S; T S, P T D. A, T’S T R: F I T S O D W D M C, W W H S O T M C, M G U P. T’S T R T M C O S L L. F W W B T W A S O T, T’O’S W, T P M’S C, T P O D’D L, T L’S D, T I O O, A T S T P M O T’U T, W H H M H Q M W A B B? W W F B, T G A S U A W L, B T T D O S A D, T U’D C, F W B N T R, P T W, A M U R B T I W H T F T O T W K N O? T C D M C O U A, A T T N H O R I S O’E W T P C O T, A E O G P A M
W T R T C T A A L T N O A.

Then you just play a game of how many letters can you guess in a row. Gamifying the process is genius because it doesn’t feel like a boring chore. Also the brain naturally uses anchors for memory so each letter becomes an anchor and you’ll retain so much more that way without the stress of endless repetition.

Pretty soon you’ll be able to do the whole speech word perfect just looking at the first letters and then all you have to do is make the game about trying to say whole sentences just by looking at the first letter of each sentence. It’s a truly incredible system and now you know it without having to listen to some guy being vague for 10 minutes.