One thing you’ll find on the lower end of some budget indie titles are thoughtful remixes of classic concepts, either working to enhance their play, presentation, or a bit of both. I think that was the goal for Busway Islands, and in most regards I think they were pretty successful in taking the simple concepts of the classic game Pipes and adding some flavor. That said, not everything goes right in terms of play.

Your goal, on a general level, will be moving around road sections and rotating them in order to ensure your vehicles are able to pass from their entrance to a specified exit. While it starts out pretty simply with just a road to manage, it will then add in tracks for a train as well, and then even begin mixing together different heights of areas with bridges and elevated sections, slowly but surely adding complexity.

Ah, but that also ends up undermining the experience, unfortunately, as the game’s lack of more complete control over the camera becomes an issue. In particular, given the limits you have on how you can adjust your view, raised areas and even objects in the scenery can start making it tougher to see some of your lower movable pieces. Even when you know what it is you're looking for, having to adjust your view with your limited means can be needlessly aggravating. Another issue is just how clumsy the controls can feel trying to move between different pieces versus swapping them versus rotating them. If you take your time it works well enough, but it’s also an area where it feels like they could have come up with a more clear cut and effective solution to reduce those aggravations as well.

In the end, given its price, it’s hard to be too rough on this effort, as on the whole it has just enough of a fresh take on classic play to be of interest. There’s no doubt that it visually won’t win any awards, and I would regularly curse the limitations of its camera, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t engaging. If you’re willing to tolerate some of its weaknesses, it’s still a decent (if pretty short) experience.