August 6, 2026 - Patch Notes

Hello, bus drivers! 🚍👋

Today, we are releasing a patch for Bus Bound on all platforms that adds free content, including a new map and two new buses. You can access these after opening all the bridges on the main map. You will unlock the ‘Emberville Outskirts’, which connects to multiple parts of the city.

This new area includes new bus stops, a new highway, and new locations, such as an airport. While the outskirts don't feature an upgrade, all bus stops offer new bus customization rewards to unlock.

Get ready to also drive the Horizon Hydrogen Double 80ft and Horizon Hydrogen 60ft Gen2, two unique articulated buses that offer ample space to maximize your passenger throughput.

The new paid DLC brings the ‘Sightseeing’ game mode, specifically designed to test your understanding of the city. Experience passenger service in entirely new ways while also driving the new Horizon Sightseer Gen2.

The update also brings quality-of-life improvements, addresses bus mastery issues, and more. The full details are below!

New Features:

Free Outskirts Map Extension:

• Gameplay:

  • A new vast area - Emberville Outskirts - has been added. Three new subzones expand opportunities to build long, interesting routes.

  • You are able to unlock the Outskirts following the progression of the base game. Do this by maxing out the Fairview bus stop in Windfall Oaks and unlocking all the bridges. 

  • 40+ events are added to the new areas to make them feel more lively.

  • Road connections in the Belvedere, Ashtree, Transit, and The Strings districts have been upgraded for smooth access to the Airport.

• Rewards:

  • New Airport DLC skins are added.

• Visuals:

  • On the Drive map, there are now a couple of planes flying above the Airport.

  • Ad billboards under the bridge are now emissive, lighting up the surroundings at night.

Base Game:

• New buses are added: Horizon Hydrogen Double 80ft and Horizon Hydrogen 60ft Gen2.

Hidden Gems Tour DLC:

• Gameplay:

  • You can now drive along tourist routes to explore Emberville's sights and learn more about the city's story.

  • Tourist Drives have different difficulty levels based on the number of unlocked bus stops and challenge players’ knowledge of the city to optimize navigation.

  • Tourist routes are embedded in the base game progression: A new tourist route appears every day in the morning shift.

  • A new bus has been added for the most immersive tourist route experience: Horizon Sightseer Gen2.

  • Tourist Drives are available in multiplayer.

• UI:

  • Tourist drives have their own Satisfaction/Mood meter and progression for the stops.

• Visuals:

  • Passengers have new sparkle reactions when leaving the bus while in a Tourist Drive.

• Rewards:

  • A new ‘Post Cards’ section has been added to the Office menu, where you can get different cards as rewards for sightseeing drives.

Quality of Life Updates:

Hidden Gems DLC

• Gameplay:

  • Basic gameplay features are also available and trackable throughout the Tourist Drives, enabling seamless progression through the game (Bus masteries and corresponding Achievements).

Base Game:

• Traffic:

  • Drive Events are adjusted around the city to optimize traffic.

  • Taxi NPVs have been brought back to the High Rise base level. 

  • Traffic density in the Outer City has increased.

• UI:

  • Onboarding popups saved in the player profile are now only visible once, until you reset them in Settings.

  • Player Avatars are now loaded and visible on Steam, PlayStation 5, and XBOX.

• Visuals:

  • Bus backgrounds are replaced with new, unified screenshots (Drive Map/End of Drive screen).

  • Some lights have been added to the Bohm statue to make it more visible at night.

  • Fixed the spawn weight of some pedestrian-only populations. This should prevent the spawning of police officers in large numbers.

  • Tweaked some environmental assets around new areas to load smoothly and seamlessly for the player.

  • Tweaked the lighting around Emberville to optimize memory usage and provide a more natural look.

• Roads:

  • Added a ‘Signal Ahead’ pavement painting to warn about traffic lights along high-speed limit roads.

• Modding:

  • Added UVS for Ride buses.

• Steering Wheels:
  Several tweaks were made to steering wheel controls and bindings:

  • Wait for enhanced user input settings to be loaded.

  • Keep previously seen steering wheels if none are attached.

  • Apply the previous preset default even if no steering wheel is attached.

• Buses:

  • The door button of the Horizon 60ft changed from opening just Door 3 to all doors. Now, you can control the first two doors individually and open the rest.

  • The Horizon 60ft Diesel now has a smoke effect for exhaust.

• Audio:

  • Welsh audio language is now available on PC.

Other Bug Fixes:

• Gameplay:

  • Bus Masteries are now initialized with the correct progression level on save/load, so they are tracked and displayed correctly.

    • Skipped masteries won't be recovered, but new saves won't have the issue anymore.

  • Bus Masteries progress is now shown according to the current drive.

  • Bendy buses on the client's side now teleport again after spawning, fixing the issue where bendy buses sometimes get stuck.

  • Celebration drives now start in their appropriate weather and shift.

  • The “Transit Crossing” achievement is fixed on PlayStation 5.

• Buses:

  • Fixed LOD issues with the rear of the K11, and the middle section has been re-weighted to achieve higher-fidelity bending.

  • Adjusted the Ride K9MDER floor collider to be higher off the ground.

  • Improved bus cockpit texture sharpness.

  • Electrip Letenda no longer jumps upwards when using the "Respawn Bus" function.

  • Passengers are now boarding the Ride buses correctly, without getting stuck in doors.

• Visuals:

  • Fixed the set dressing characters that were causing issues in the Belvedere District.

  • Fixed the clouds on the map in the Drive and Pause menus so they have their natural form.

• Steering Wheels:

  • Fixed the XBOX Series X preset button binding.

  • The steering wheel settings are no longer reset when the PlayStation 5 is restarted while the steering wheel is connected.

• Audio:

  • Added a ‘beep’ sound to the kneeling of buses where it was missing.

  • The loud sound of Horizon Gen1 has been fixed.

• UI:

  • Expanded the player’s guide to include additional pictures and content.

  • Fixed the "Press any button..." screen that remained in the settings menu, on top of all other screens, when the multiplayer session was full on PlayStation 5.

  • PROS is now correctly loading on PC.

  • The EULA that appeared twice on Steam has been fixed.

  • The list of perks in the stats menu is now scrollable with the controller.

  • The bridge blocker icons no longer duplicate when returning to line selection.

  • The radio widget is now disabled when all HUD tips are disabled in settings.

• Multiplayer:

  • Multiplayer mode is now correctly activated when the player purchases PlayStation®Plus.

• Settings:

  • The game no longer softlocks when reassigning the steering button in Controls after restarting (consoles only).

What’s next for Bus Bound:

Thank you for continuing to support Bus Bound! 🙏 We are looking forward to hearing what you think of this update.

We are working away on another map expansion and new DLC. Keep an eye on our social media channels for more. Make sure to discover all of those hidden gems in the meantime! 🚌🔎

-stillalive and Saber