The story.
It started, like a lot of bad ideas, at hour 4 of a 14-hour sleeper bus from Hanoi to Hoi An.
Six of us — strangers who had crossed paths in a Hanoi Old Quarter dorm — had run out of phone battery, conversation, and patience somewhere outside Vinh. Someone pulled out a deck of cards. They were the wrong cards (UNO, missing two yellows). We invented a game. Someone wrote down the rules on the back of a Vietnam visa-on-arrival receipt.
By the time the bus pulled into Hoi An at 7 AM, we had three games. By the time we crossed into Cambodia three weeks later, we had ten. Friends started messaging us asking for "that bus game." So we built it.
"NIGHT BUS is what happens when you take the best parts of a hostel common room and put them in a phone."
Where it was made.
What we believe.
- The best stories happen when phones are down and a game is up.
- Strangers become friends faster when they have something to lose together.
- You don't need an account, an app store, or your data. You need a game.
- Backpacker culture is the original "open-source" — everything good is shared, remixed, and passed forward.
- Take the dare, improvise it, or sit out. Your call. We are not your mum.
- The 14-hour bus ride is sacred. Build for it.
Who we are.
A small crew of designers, devs, and full-time backpackers who met in too many hostel kitchens. We're scattered across SE Asia, Latin America, and one stubborn corner of Berlin.
We don't take VC money. We don't sell your data — there's no data to sell. NIGHT BUS is free because it should be. If you ever want to support us, the best thing you can do is bring it to your hostel and play it with new people.
Get involved.
Want to translate NIGHT BUS into your language? Have a game idea from your trip? Found a bug somewhere over the Andes? Email us at [email protected].
We read every message. We ship features that make us laugh.