The Bus is developed by TML-Studios, who is known for
Tourist Bus Simulator,
Fernbus Simulator and
World of Subways series, with Aerosoft publishes the game. The
early access version was available for
Microsoft Windows on 25 March 2021. It was initially developed on
Unreal Engine 4, and was upgraded to
Unreal Engine 5 on 14 December 2022. The game was set to leave early access in 2024, when
multiplayer is expected to be available. The game is released on the 26 March 2026 to players on
PlayStation 5,
Windows and
Xbox Series X/S.
Updates Early Access will go through different major phases, but there are regular updates to the game in between them. Even though developers said it will take them around 8 to 16 months, currently, as of June 2025, this game is in
phase 3.
Phase 1 The Bus was released to
Steam platform, and initially included the bus line
TXL with various routes,
Scania Citywide LF 18m, 10.9m buses, along with simple features like: passenger transport with boarding and deboarding, ticket selling, weather, seasons, also route, line and tour editor tool. This phase ended in December 14, 2022.
Phase 2 Introduction to five new lines: Line 200, Line 100, Line 300, Line 245, Line 123. Three new buses with its variants were released –
Mercedes-Benz eCitaro (unbranded),
MAN Lion's City DD and
VDL Citea LLE & SLFA. One of the core features in this phase is
multiplayer mode, which hasn't been released yet. Modding was introduced to allow players to make maps and other various modifications to the game. This phase has also got performance optimizations, such as conversion to
Unreal Engine's World Partition system.
Phase 3 So far, four variants of
Solaris Urbino electric bus and Line 147 and beta multiplayer have been released. Economy mode will be released, which includes creating player's own bus company, buying and selling vehicles, hiring and firing staff, etc. Apart from more optimizations and polishing, AI buses and AI trams will be available. ==References==