Desert Bus is quite probably the world’s most boring game. Developed for the unreleased Pen & Tellers: Smoke and Mirrors it is one of the several anti-games designed for the purpose of being used to trick or annoy your friends and loved ones. In Desert Bus, you drive a bus, through the desert on the exceedingly mundane route from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. There are no curves in the road and little to no scenery. The trip is in real time and to complete a single run takes 8 solid hours of gameplay. And once an entire lap has been completed you receive a single point. You cannot cheat at Desert Bus as your vehicle veers slightly to the right, requiring your constant attention. There is no pause button and if left to its own devices the bus will leave the road and need to be towed all the way back to Tucson, again in real time. The game has gained quite a bit of notoriety in certain communities and has even been ported to iOS and Android in recent years. You might rightfully ask at this point why anyone would bother going through the trouble of playing this game, let alone of porting it to phones.
A scene from the most recent Desert Bus for Hope.
That reason is for charity. In 2007 the comedy troupe, Loading Ready Run started the annual event Desert Bus for Hope in which they play Desert Bus for as long as they physically can with the intention of raising money for the charity group Childs Play. The event went over quite well raising $22,805 in its first year alone. With the completion of Desert Bus 2015, the running lifetime total of funds gathered from the enterprise has reached the astounding total of $3,115,565.15. Now that is a lot of funds, and that was a lot of Desert Bus. For those interested in getting in on the action themselves but are unwilling to wait for Desert Bus for Hope 2016 to roll around there is good news; all proceeds from downloading the smartphone version of the game are donated to Child’s Play as well.
What do you think? Do you donate to charity? Let us know in the comments below!
Trent Katzenberger is a writer, youtuber, gamer, nerd, and just all around a strange sort of guy. He loves trying new stuff and creating odd things.
