Bus Simulator 18

Bus Simulator 18 puts players in the driver's seat of a licensed city bus, navigating a sprawling fictional German metropolis across twelve districts while managing routes, hiring drivers, and growing a transit company. Released in June 2018, it built a large, divided following — 79% Mostly Positive across 1,934 English reviews — anchored in genuine praise for its core driving feel, running into an unusually large body of criticism about the traffic and stability systems surrounding it.

Driving reviewers say genuinely delivers

The praise for the core mechanic is specific and consistent. One reviewer states it plainly: "The Driving mechanic is really cool. It teaches you how to drive. Really love this game, it was worth the money." Another, more measured but reaching a similar conclusion after 15 hours: "the driving is cool. once you get the hang of it is cool, in respect to driving and routes and such." That's real, specific credit for delivering exactly what the genre promises — a methodical, weighty driving feel distinct from arcade-style alternatives — even from reviewers who go on to raise serious complaints about everything built around that core mechanic.

Traffic AI reviewers describe as fundamentally broken

The most convergent, most detailed complaint in the sample targets the behavior of AI-controlled traffic. One reviewer with 222 hours invested writes bluntly: "AI traffic behaves as if they're not sober: Pedestrians start to cross the street when you're half inside the road crossing, cars are crashing into you, or causing you to fly the other direction, or fall from the sky." Another, independently, describes the same underlying problem from a different angle: "abysmal traffic AI that sometimes stops at intersections for 20 seconds per car for no reason (even when no cars are in sight)." A third, 15-vote reviewer corroborates the identical pattern: "retarded ai cars which stop at green light or when the road is empty they still stop and block entire route for multiple minutes." Three independent, highly detailed accounts of the identical specific failure — AI traffic behaving unpredictably and blocking routes — is strong enough convergence to treat as an accurate, persistent characteristic of the shipped game rather than an occasional glitch.

Crashes reviewers say get worse the longer you play

A separate, equally common complaint concerns stability, with a specific pattern reviewers describe independently: sessions that start fine and degrade over time. One reviewer explains: "the game started well for me... Unfortunately around the eight hour mark, the game started to freeze on a regular basis requiring me to constantly restart my pc." Another: "it keeps crashing :( It works for about 20-30 minutes maximum, then crashes. THREE times its crashed." A third reports the most severe outcome: "The Game doesn't want to open at all... After I got a new computer, it doesn't want to play anymore... Money wasted, down the drain." These reports span a range of severity, but all point to the same underlying pattern — a game whose stability degrades with playtime or system changes rather than remaining consistently playable.

Peripheral support reviewers say doesn't work

A specific, practical complaint concerns steering wheel hardware, which the genre's dedicated audience often relies on directly. One reviewer states simply: "Steering wheel doesn`t work for some reason. Refunded." Another, more detailed, describes force-feedback issues with a popular wheel: "the force feedback and response in-tske from my logitech g29 are really poor." For a genre built substantially around wheel-and-pedal setups, broken peripheral support is a meaningful gap distinct from the AI and stability issues above.

A publisher that moved on to sequels instead of fixing this one

Checked against astragon Entertainment's own partner-events history, there's no record of a meaningful patch or content fix in recent years — the publisher's public activity since 2021 consists entirely of storewide sales and cross-promotion for the franchise's newer entries, Bus Simulator 21 and the upcoming Bus Simulator 27. One reviewer's frustration captures the resulting dilemma directly: "Don't know whether to try later versions! Very Disappointed as I love the trucking games!" That's a specific, structural explanation for why the AI-traffic and stability complaints documented above have persisted for years without resolution — the studio's business model has clearly shifted toward new paid sequels rather than fixing this specific release.

Settings and onboarding complaints reviewers found needlessly frustrating

Beyond the AI and stability issues, a smaller but specific thread concerns basic usability. One reviewer describes a frustrating attempt to adjust display settings: after "30 minutes trying to fix the brightness settings, because you have to physically change the code to do so," they found the tutorial itself became permanently inaccessible once skipped, leaving them "with a game that looks ugly and I have no information" on how to proceed. Another separately criticizes the lack of in-progress feedback: "No mission progress tracking, only end goal." Neither complaint is as severe as the traffic AI or crash issues above, but both point to a game whose basic quality-of-life polish lagged behind its core driving simulation even at launch.

Verdict

Bus Simulator 18 delivers a genuinely satisfying core driving mechanic that reviewers credit directly, wrapped in a broken traffic AI system and persistent stability problems that an unusually large, convergent share of the same reviewers describe in specific, matching detail. With no meaningful fixes in years and the publisher's attention now on newer sequels, buyers should treat the game largely as it stands today. Worth a budget purchase for the driving feel alone if those specific rough edges don't bother you.

Sources: Steam store page and appdetails API (release date, pricing, platform data); Steam's aggregate review data (query_summary totals, English-language sample); individually read user reviews, both positive and negative, sorted by helpfulness and recency; Steam's global achievement statistics API; astragon Entertainment's own partner-events history from 2018 through 2026.