Create and run your own Prison

The Felix games team were kindly given a copy of Prison Architect by Introversion. In this game you act as an architect and overseer of a Prison. You get to hire staff, build the prison, and then watch over as you gain more prisoners make money and expand. Many, many hours and just as many failed Prisons later I am ready to tell you just why you should buy this game.

Firstly the game has its own charming art style. It looks amazing and doesn’t take too good of a computer to run it smoothly. The only downside is you feel too attached to your cute little prisoners and need to constantly click on them to remind you of the horrible crimes they have committed (such as saying FIRST on too many YouTube videos) so that you can give them a harsh treatment, probably because you spent all your money and can’t afford niceties. The game itself starts with a short tutorial, which teaches you the basics of building controlling your workforce. This tutorial ends in an execution and even has a short animation that shows you the prisoner committing his crime and then repenting. I’ve not been so moved since I watched Dead Man Walking! I can tell that this game as well as being entertaining will make me question my morals.

When you are then thrown into the big open world of Prison Architect you learn very quickly through trial and error how to create a successful Prison. My first prison failed because I had no walls and so all the prisoners just walked away. The second because I didn’t realise that you could stop accepting new prisoners each day and so I had 48 prisoners with only 1 cell and 2 guards, which led to endless riots and the death of one of my guards. However attempt 3 and I was ready to make a fairly successful prison. A prison with the right number of cells and showers that didn’t flood all the time! This was just the beginning. Now armed with grant money and my own accountant, each day brought in more money which I can use to upgrade the prison. The warden unlocks bureaucracy in which you can specialise in certain aspects of running a prison. So soon my prison had its own health centre armed with a psychologist, and a chief of security who told me that in fact the prisoners I thought would be happy with their small cells were not happy. Worried that they were up to something I conducted a shakedown, and searched all the prisoner’s rooms. Eventually this ended with me confiscating a whopping 67 items from 22 prisoners and about half of them committed to solitary confinement for starting fights with my guards. Also many of prisoners had been digging tunnels to freedom. This saddened me; I gave them so much a love! A big shower that doesn’t flood, food once a day, a room with a bed and a toilet... What more could they want from me? Well finally back on track I opened my prison to some high risk inmates and thus started the greatest tragedy in the history of Chenty Prison. For some reason the workmen making my new cells used the front door of the prison (as in took it out to place somewhere else). When my high risk prisoners arrived they were able to just walk out. This fiasco ended in 3 deaths, 2 unconscious prisoners and 3 escapes.

This is a great thing about the game; you can play it exactly as you want. You can spend time architecting the most beautiful prison, make a prison that keeps all the prisoners happy, just make a big mass prison and suffer the consequences like I did or accept new prisoners every day which is a challenge! If you get bored of your own prison you can download other peoples from the steam workshop. Someone has even made the prison from the Shawshank Redemption. This game offers so much for how simple it is and it’s just in the alpha phase of its development. Not since Minecraft’s beta have I felt so excited for updates adding new features. This is a game I will continue to play for a long time yet. Seriously, this game won’t disappoint you!