Note: This review is only for the demo of the game and things are still being developed. Anything in this review is subject to change.
About The Game
Get ready for a crazy drive across Fang island! Gather your friends for this 1-4 player cooperative looting action game. Save people from the zombie apocalypse, craft and expand your base and turn your bus into a real beast! Escape the island and uncover its conspiracies in BUS: Bro U Survived.
Wishlist the game Here
Character Customisation
Upon Starting the game your instantly met with a character customisation menu and I have to say I actually really enjoyed creating my character there is some cool features here. You can customise your character face completely you get the options of hair, beard, eyebrows, mouth as well as clothing options from haps, glasses, tops, bottoms and shoes.
Bus Customisation
We did actually play around with the bus customisation before we even got into playing the demo. You spawn into an open space just you and your glorious bus, here you can add panels to your bus where ever you want them, you can even change the location of the doors on the bus as well.
Another cool feature in the bus editor is the ability to add weapons to the bus like saw blades on all of the corners and roof rails, I get the feeling that the developers are really going to go all out on the bus customisation side of this considering the whole idea of the game is that your move around in your bus collecting things.
Demo Gameplay
Now I want to say before we get into this that we where warned that the game plays better in multiplayer and the whole time I was playing the demo I wish I had played it in multiplayer, small issue here though there where only four people online and all the games where locked upon waiting 20 mins for someone to join my hosted game I thought ill just do this alone. Now that is not to say that this is going to be reflected in full release, considering the amount of demos on steam right now its crazy to think that there will be hundreds on one game anyways I digress.
Upon starting the demo your character is driving down a highway through a desert and crashes his car see him fly through the air and land in a ditch. The radio is and the radio host becomes a narrator of sorts for the first part of the demo which I thought was a nice little touch to add here, progressing through the winding path of the ditch that we are now stuck in the game starts to teach you the controls and how to play.
After a short period of time we find a pole this pole acts as your weapon for the remainder of the demo, now its time to fight your first zombie and after a swift couple of smacks to the face we dispatch of him. There is a winch and a gate in this area that is locked but by grabbing the winch and hooking it onto the gate we are able to pull the gate open giving us access to the area where a bus has crashed and you guessed it that is now our because finders keepers in an apocalypse right. After using a second winch to pull the bus from the wreckage and finding all the parts we need to put this beauty back together we are now free to drive out of here.
You end up meeting up with a guy called G that has some kind of safe stop or this is what it seems to be. Here we have access to a mission map and the ability to customise our bus however its worth noting I could not figure out how to customise my bus on the demo so I continued with the normal bus I had.
After taking G’s advice and opting to go rescue a scientised from her lab we take off in our bright yellow mean machine. arriving at an abandoned house that took me far too long to figure out that I had to duck through a hole in the fence anyways, once inside the complex we find a phone and the scientist talks to us and tell us where to find her. pressing forward into the lab we come across a little puzzle section which is shortly followed by a boss fight, however this is not your normal boss fight here we play rock, paper, scissors with a robot hand.
Once the boss is down the demo ends and we are told that they are working on a whole host of things from new enemy types, more weapons, more bus customisations, characters and more.
Our Thoughts
BUS: Bro U Survived has a ton of potential and I can see how fun this game could be when played with friends with the developers hard at work making tons more content for the game and the pure carnage that is showing in other sources of media this game could be one to look out for if done correctly. That being said I felt the solo play fell a little flat everything seems to take a lot longer and things just felt a little off but then I really cant judge when the game tells you its supposed to be played in multiplayer. Other than this little issue I can see the potential and its defiantly a game I would not mind trying once fully released.
