Stop The Bus is a discard strategy card game that features a gradient-green tabletop landscape with the draw deck and waste pile at the center and four stop points on a bus route around it represented by City of London bus passes. Each bus pass features a character picture and a score zone that updates throughout play. The player and each of the game's virtual players receive three bus tokens or fare coins as well.
The game automatically deals three cards to each pass holder. A red, double-decker London bus drives the route. At each stop, the player, or one of their opponents, draws a card from either area and discards any card from their hand. Their goal is to have the highest score when the bus ends its route at a specific location.
The player stops the bus when they reach 30 or 31 points from the same suit, 30 from three of a kind from any suit, or simply a high score from all cards. The bus pass holder who scores the lowest loses the round and one of their bus fare coins. If they lose all of their tokens, the number of pass holders decreases. If multiple people tie in last place, no one loses a token. The winner from the previous round always goes first in the next one.
The outcome of a Stop The Bus round depends on the chosen difficulty level (Casual, Regular or Expert) and a mix of mostly strategy, timing and luck. The player must try to remember discarded cards to continuously re-plan their strategy.
