Prison Building Simulator 2010-2016.


It's basically that, yet it's fun. It's right now as polished a game can be, but that "tab to switch selected object" is way overdue, at least since it was FIRST RELEASED it should of been added. I also think it's slightly over-priced based on it's mechanics and detail. It makes Garry's Mod look under-priced!

But yet, still fun and a great way to show your creativity.


9.9/10

Love it so fun

This is the best game I have.

You need this in your folder, for sure.

No, really - go buy it - you won't regret it.

123132

An perfect game to waste time on. Great for just playing for a bit, but be careful, it might take longer than that to feel like you can quit.

Prison Architect is a prison simulation game. It was kickstarted by three university students in 2001, now sold with more two millions units on PC and won the BAFTA award for Best Persistent Game in 2016. If you love tycoon and sandbox games. Then this game is definitely for you. Especially this is a rather special simulation, compared to other games that you have played where most of the time you will either run a civilisation or food joint.

What's is like to run a prison? Do you intend to have a highly secured prison where no one escapes from your prison, or a place where prisoners are given a second chance to join back to the society. Although the game may seems very simple to you, with all the "South Park" character designs. This is not just a simple build and run game, but there's lots of decisions to make. Amidst juggling with the prison needs, you need to think of a constructive layout of your prisons to prevent them from tunneling their way out, schedule their timeslots, train guards, finding ways to have gang leaders to work for you, and have informants to share their inside traid secrets.

For gameplay it's rather smooth, but will tend to slow down after more than 300 prisoners. As each individual person have their own AI movements. So it gets a few pauses, but not choppy. The campaign mode is rather short, though all the episodes are glimpse of different perspectives from different prisoners. You get to see the story behind Mafias, people whom killed his wife for adultery, people who are on death rows. There's also an emotional touch, where prisoners are at their lowest point of time, asking for help from their spiritual beliefs to regain faith. All these are small stuffs that builds the game. Yet not just building is the main aspect of it, you also get to play as the prisoners in Escape Mode. Where you have to escape from the prison. Either by force, or allying with prisoners to form a gang and create a massive riot and sneak out when the riots is happening. There's still some simple graphical bugs where the sprites are not positioned correctly on the boxes, and AI doesn't still doesn't work quite well with dead bodies.

Nevertheless this game is worth the keep for a long run, and soon you will come back again to remember the changes it had from the start. Introversion Software is still updating this game, as of 03 Oct 2016. I do hope that there are more sprites created for example the scene where the two brothers tried to have a bank robbery. This will allow community to create their own campaign storylines. Or even multiplayer modes, where one will be the one building the prison, while the other at the same time is trying to escape from the prison.

Psst.. there's also a pseudo-3D look in the developer tools, but is resource intensive.

Prisons Architect Change Log: http://www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarchitect/builds.html
Prison Architect at BAFTA Games Awards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--cMJBn2L8s

I would not sugest this game because it has no overall goal. After 3 hours it will start to get boring. I'm trying to keep this short and simple DON'T GET IT on less it's on sale and you are willing to download mods and make sure you like it currently because it will not be gitting anymore updates beside bug fixes.

This is not a $30 game, by any means. Holy crap are the packages expensive. Basically, it seems if you didn't get the game in Early Access, you're kind of screwed. It's worth about $15, which is what it was originally sold for.

Pros
- A very fun game, with a lot of fun features. Prisons can be built to be very diverse. A lot of small touches that add a lot to the game, such as remote doors so you don't have to station guards to constantly open and close them.
- The different prisoner types are a lot of fun, and the way you have to keep them apart to stop them from going after each other adds a nice challenge.
- I really enjoyed being able to sell prisons and start a new one with the amount of cash from the sale. This allows you to build even larger prisons, or employ a totally new design with enough money to build the way you want to build without restrictions, and without enabling the unlimited funds cheat if you don't want to go that route.
- Features that can be toggled on and off, such as gangs and weather conditions. They all can add new twists and challenges to deal with.
- I do like the fact that there's a link to the wiki built into the menu. That was a nice touch.

Cons
- The bugs are pretty horrible. Dog handlers often get stuck on doors, staff can get caught in an endless "too dangerous" loop where the only solution is to load a save (I haven't found another solution). Otherwise, staff members will hit that particular spot and twitch back and forth endlessly.
- The graphics and sound are very rudimentary. In fact, there is no music, just sound effects. Reminiscent of SimTower, but that game was also from 20 years ago. Basically if you care about flashy graphics and sound, you'll be very disappointed.
- I was hoping the campaign would be more than the glorified tutorial that it turned out to be. There was an attempt at a story, but it wasn't much. This is more or less a sandbox game.
- The game can definitely become repetitive. Once you build all the types of rooms, you're basically expanding by building more of the same.

Picked this up on sale and I'm very satisfied. At full price, I may have been more hesitant to give it a thumbs up. The level of bugs are pretty bad for a game that has seen it's final update. Keep your autosave enabled, you'll probably need it sooner or later.