In What the Bus? you play an urban commuter trying to get to work on time. It’s a normal work day, with just a short bus trip and two subway rides. Easy, right? Of course not! You’ll experience delays, technical problems, unannounced changes to the transit system, and landscape that clearly doesn’t belong on your commute.
What the Bus? describes itself as “a transit nightmare.” That’s more than just a metaphor: Eventually you’ll start to feel like you’re in a real nightmare, one in which your id has conjured up just about every fear you’ve ever had about what could go wrong with public transportation. But What the Bus? is a comedic nightmare more than a terrifying one, as you’ll often find yourself laughing — maybe not at everything that goes wrong, but where you end up or what you see along the way.
I think What the Bus? taps into some primal fear of many of us who have used public transportation. Well, maybe “fear” is a bit strong, but certainly lots of us have had bad experiences with public transportation (*) and so can relate. At the Seattle IF meetup yesterday author E. Joyce said that some of the events in the game are based on personal experiences, and I can certainly believe that. What the Bus? gives the player the opportunity to relive those experiences and laugh at them at the same time.
That comedy is an important aspect of What the Bus?. The game isn’t terrifying — more like unsettling — but that unsettled feeling is leavened by the amusingly incongruous things you see along the way. I found myself chuckling regularly (your GPS app makes an impressive number of poor estimates for where you actually are), as well as doubled over at one point (that involved licking the transit map — surprisingly useful!). At the Seattle IF meetup yesterday Bitter Karella made the comment that What the Bus? skillfully combines horror with comedy, and I think that’s accurate.
What the Bus? is an easy play — probably no more than 10 minutes to reach your first ending. It took me about 45 minutes to obtain all ten endings. These range from one in which you actually make it to your job (albeit quite late) to finding yourself in all kinds of strange locations, from public transportation limbo to even hell. I think my favorite was the one where you end up stuck in IKEA. Definitely try What the Bus?, especially if you’ve ever had a bad public transportation experience.
(Disclaimer: We played some of What the Bus? at the Seattle IF meetup yesterday, with the author, E. Joyce, reading the game aloud. We managed to see three of the endings in that time. I finished the rest of the game on my own earlier today.)
(*) Given the game’s subject matter maybe it’s worth sharing my two worst public transportation experiences. They both happened in Germany, strangely enough, and they were both my fault. In one I had flown into Frankfurt and needed to catch the train to Berlin where I would be staying with the family of a friend. I got on completely the wrong train, headed for who knows where. Over an hour later and with the help of a friendly German guy I managed to get off that one and on a train to Berlin — but I arrived after midnight, sorely straining the hospitality of my hosts.
The other is a story that my children still enjoy hearing me tell. I was in Berlin, trying to catch a train to its outskirts. I got on the right train, only to realize I was in the first class compartment. Since I had a coach ticket, I exited the train and started walking down the platform toward the nearest coach car. Just as I reached the doors, they closed. I pressed the button, but the doors didn’t open. I pounded on them. They still didn’t open. Then the train started to move. I had to stand there, watching the train pull away, a sad and forlorn figure all by myself on the platform, imagining everyone across the way looking at me and thinking, “What an idiot.” It was like something out of a movie. (Of course, I realize now that I should have just walked through the first class car to a coach car, but hindsight and all that.)
An Exercise for the Reader 