PPP2 Review: Prison Architect

Another one of my favourite games to come out of this year is Prison Architect, a game still currently in Alpha but is developed by Introversion Software. Prison Architect is a construction and management simulation game where you get a plot of land, a to do list and in 24 hours your first prisoners will arrive. As it is still in Alpha there are a few things still wrong with the game, and especially when I first bought it there were many bugs meaning that sometimes you would just get stuck and couldn't actually continue. But saying that, a lot, actually pretty much all, of these bugs have now been ironed out and there are only ever a few glitches, but none that stop you playing and none that stop you enjoying it. Also as it is still in Alpha new bits continue to be added in. When I first purchased it there were about 4 or 5 grants to get, now there are about 20, so it's ever improving and new content is added every 3 or 4 weeks in little chunks.

The game is essentially a top-down construction simulation where the player takes control of building and running a prison. The player is responsible for managing various aspects of their prison like building facilities and holding cells before fine-tunning with individual cells, canteens and shower rooms for them. All of this is then run by your employees. At the start of the game you only have workers who build you prison but you will eventually hire a warden, guards, cooks, cleaners and an accountant.  You basically are in charge and you are responsible for keeping the finance in order and keeping the prisoners happy. A lot of inspiration for this game came from Theme Hospital, Dungeon Keeper and then obvious the Prison Tycoon game series. But for me this is much more organised and you can do so much more with the prison, you don't even have to have the prisoners if you don't want.

The general gameplay is really nice and the layout of everything, although sometimes changing and moving around due to new developments, is simple and easy to navigate around without being over complicated with new stuff being added constantly. But this is an element I really like about the game, as its changing constantly you can clearly see whats new and the changes that have been added in, usually for the better and this then means your not going into a new game every time, your going into an old game your familiar with, that just have new elements which is something unique to Alpha's that I really like.

The thing that does draw me to the game though is the construction side of it. Although it used to be quite glitchy and you'd end up with a room that you didn't want with no way of deleting it, these errors have now been fixed and it all runs very smoothly as you continue to build extensions and new elements to your prison. What I enjoy as well is that there is a planning mode. A place where you can essentially draw up blueprints with walls, paths and objects and plan where everything is going to go before you actually make it. This is a really nice idea as you can plan ahead a new section of your prison and see how its going to look next to the old bit before you actually have to make it.

Another thing that is really nice is the art style and interactivity that they players can have with the game, providing they have the money to invest in the early stage. The art style of the prison is very cartoony and the characters are all very simple blobby guys walking around which works well as there is no complicated animation needed for the movement. Where the interactivity comes into it is if you pay a bit more money into the game you can add your name to a prisoner and write his biography so that in the final polished game you have a chance of seeing your name, or name you choose for the prisoner to pop up, making it that little bit more special.

Overall this is a brilliant game that is worth paying into even now as most of the game runs smoothly and if it doesn't, it's usually fixed within the month with the next patch update. The animations on the characters are all brilliant especially if you get into the situation where riots begin to happen and your trying to place order on the chaos that is once your quiet prison, it's crazy how fast some inmates can get angry. But it is genuinely a joy to play as even if your just into designing, you can lock your prison off to new inmates and just design something with the walls to create something that you think is going to be the best prison. It does also come with Steam Workshop as well so there is that ability to be able to share your prisons with others and download theirs to see what your doing wrong, as you probably will get it wrong a number of times, but that's the beauty of this game.