In case it slipped past you over the weekend: Thank You Bus Driver, the first new game Double Fine has announced since going independent from Xbox this summer, launches October 14 on PC. TheGamer brought the date back into view on September 27, but it has been set for a few weeks. Double Fine revealed the game on September 4 and announced the October 14 date in a Steam post on September 9.
The game’s Steam page shows the same October 14 date, and Double Fine’s game page lists it as “Coming soon! (Oct 14th 2026)” with Microsoft Windows as the only platform. You can wishlist it on Steam and GOG. There’s no price yet. Neither store showed one when RCG checked around 5 PM CT Monday.
Drive fast, slap faster
Double Fine calls it “a chaotic bus driving game where you take on the role of a town’s bus driver just trying to get through the day with minimal rule breaking and maximum gratitude.” TheGamer reports that the team pitches it as “Crazy Taxi meets Papers, Please!”
The rules on your bus change every day, and the depot keeps adding new ones. When a passenger breaks one, you slap them. TheGamer’s examples are “no toenail clipping” and “no phone calls.” Repeat offenders get thrown out the back door. You also have to reach every stop on a tight timer. According to the game’s page, happy riders are the only thing that buys you more time: each “Thank You” from a passenger adds to the clock, and collecting enough of them unlocks bus tchotchkes, town variants and more. Cutting through a corn field is fair game. Double Fine says avoiding pedestrians, oncoming traffic and fences is “optional.”
Steam lists it as a single-player game in English, with full controller support, Steam Achievements and Steam Cloud. Double Fine showed a demo at PAX West in early September, and the game’s page lists a PAX West Game of the Show award from Crossplay Conversations.
A “weird, little” game from Double Fine Action Labs
Thank You Bus Driver is the first game announced under Double Fine Action Labs, a new label the studio says is for “weird, little” and more experimental games. Steam and GOG both list Double Fine Action Labs as the publisher, with Double Fine Productions as the developer.
Double Fine says the game “came from the brain of Double Fine’s very own Will Koehler” and was made by a small team “in a matter of weeks.” The studio calls it “an amazing example of what might come out of the polished Amnesia Fortnight project.”
That refers to Amnesia Fortnight 2026, the revival of Double Fine’s in-house game jam, which is funded on Kickstarter this year. Backers voted Architactics, Bard Crawl, Plot Armor and Uprise into the top four. Double Fine says one of those finalists will get extra development time and move into Action Labs, much as Thank You Bus Driver did. When RCG checked Monday evening, the campaign had raised $617,922 from 7,500 backers against a $400,000 goal. It closes Wednesday, September 30, at 5 PM CT.
Double Fine’s indie era gets its first new game
Tim Schafer announced on July 6 that Double Fine was independent again after seven years under Xbox, with ownership of its games going back to the studio. Since then, it has brought Keeper to PlayStation 5 and launched the Amnesia Fortnight Kickstarter. Thank You Bus Driver is the studio’s first brand-new game since independence, and it’s just over two weeks from release.
