how to play

In Prison Architect you are the supervisor of a prison, and your job is to create your own prison! You will create cells, showers, dining rooms, kitchens and everything else to create a prison as you like! You’ll start by selecting the size you want to start your prison (small, medium, large) and your options such as fog of war, continuous entry, etc. Once you agree with your selections the game will start and drop 8 workers and you can start designing your prison from there.

The gameplay reminds me of Bullfrog’s Theme Hospital, where you build buildings by clicking and dragging a size, letting the workers build it, placing doors and windows wherever you want, and setting up the interior once it’s finished. You’ll need buildings to set up your holding cells, power and water stations, and build the power and water lines to meet your prison’s utility needs. You will need to create offices for your administration, such as wardens, head of security, psychologists, accountants, and more, as well as provide for your prisoner’s needs, such as feeding, showering, cleaning, and more.

You won’t have a lot of money to start with, so you’ll need to receive grants, which give you a cash advance and more cash to complete included objectives, such as the Detention Basic Needs Grant (building the basics for your base), and give you an idea of ​​what to do next if you’re new to the game.

Staff
You can hire staff to help out in the prison or use them for administrative purposes. Janitors, gardeners, guards, armed guards, dog handlers and more can be hired to assist throughout the prison, and administrative staff can search for new rooms and bonuses for their prison, using the bureaucracy tab with an office for each.

Guards can be stationed in rooms or set up patrols using the deploy tab (research first). You can set the guard routes where you need them to be and they will follow the path until they get tired and need to rest in the staff rooms.

prisoners
Prisoners come in 3 flavors as of the current version. Gray suit prisoners are minimum security, orange suits are medium security, and red suits are maximum security. Obviously, the red and orange suit prisoners are the most dangerous variety and they will love trying to escape, stealing weapons, stealing and abusing drugs and alcohol, fighting, killing and more. In Alpha 21, you can now set different schedules for each prisoner security class. You can set a schedule for each class of inmate for each day, and you can set whether they stay in their cells, eat, work, shower, go to the yard, etc.

Inmates can also work in your prison, and as of the current version, you can have them cook, clean the prison, attend reform classes, do laundry in the laundry rooms, and use the workshop to craft upper beds, planks of wood and license plates. Some jobs, such as kitchen and shop work, require you to pass required training classes before you are allowed to work on such projects.

Reform programs allow their inmates to learn prison work skills, and basic education or addiction reform classes to beat addictions (currently alcohol and drugs). These classes will cost you money from the moment they start and are only allowed during the work phases of the day that you set. Some require 2 hours and others are 3 hour classes with multiple attendance to pass or fail the class.

situations
Sometimes, depending on the needs of the inmates (depending on whether or not they are met), they will start fighting, try to escape through the toilets in the cells, start riots, start fires, try to kill others, or overdose. of drugs. You guards will respond to incidents, and if the situation gets too messy, you can lock down the prison, lock the doors, and isolate problem areas until you can get past it.

You have access to emergency or troubleshooting tabs, such as lockdown, extortion (search the entire prison for contraband), or call emergency services (riot police, paramedics, and firefighters). If the guards detect inmates committing misconduct, they will arrest the inmate and send him or her to lockdown or solitary confinement (you set the punishment policies yourself). Punished prisoners will be suppressed, which will make them lower their heads and become more obedient to the prison rule. You can even punish a prison yourself by clicking on them and setting their punishment if you want to punish them further.

Also, with the medical and morgue rooms, you can hire medical staff to heal the wounds of staff and inmates alike, as well as help cure drug abuse (with the right program in use).

With alcohol and drug abuse in the game (Alpha 21), if prisoners are not in detox or detention, they can overdose and die if they steal drugs and use them. You can use the new programs to set up criminals to try to cleanse them of their addictions.

other
When you are done with your prison and you don’t have any recent incidents such as deaths or escapes, you can sell shares of your prison and sell the prison outright and make a new prison with the money you collected. This will give you more options and allow you to create a more elaborate prison in the future. You can still play with your prison, but you can only sell it once! You can also set the prisoner’s food rations using the policy tab, such as more or less food variety, which will affect the prisoner’s mood.

Is it worth 30 dollars?
In my opinion, even in Alpha, the game is playable and fun, but it’s not worth $30 or more in its current state. I’d say $10 or $15 is more reasonable since it’s in Alpha and nowhere near finished or complete. There is also mod support for the game on Steam and its Steam Workshop option, to add more play time to the game. It’s a great game even in Alpha, and I look forward to seeing what Introversion adds in future editions of the game!