Indie Prison Architect

[Hendo]

I've been waiting for this to drop in price for a while. Normal price on Steam is 20 quid which is quite a lot but there does seem to be a lot to it. Also this is "early access" so it's not meant to be finished yet but seems largely there for me, unless they plan on changing a lot about their art style or menus, which mostly seem fine to me.

So, it's a Sim City style game but you make a prison. You have to build it from scratch, from the outer walls to the yard, canteen, holding cells, etc. You employ staff from the Warden down to building crew.

The game starts out with a tutorial that has a prison all built bar an execution cell which it teaches you how to build that and you get the grim story of the inmate that you're blasting with electricity. It also uses this time to tell you that you're not here to judge on the inmates, just to do your job in holding them and keeping them from wrecking the joint.

Pretty much anything you can think of you have to build. If you have toilets they need to be connected to the water system, if you have buildings they must have doors, electrical items like lights need power cables running from the building to a power capacitor that needs to be maintained and not over-loaded.

I got an interest in it from the Giant Bomb quick look and it's also proven a useful tool for me to get myself started too.

[radiofloyd]

Will definitely check this out later in the year.

[Craymen Edge]

I saw that quick look a while a go, and I like the look of it.

I think Introversion are a bit hit and miss. The last game of theirs I really liked was Uplink, Darwinia/Multiwinia/Darwinia+ was an average game that they wasted nearly 10 years on. Prison Architect looks pretty promising, but I'm going to wait until it's done and decide if it's worth £20 then.

[Sly Reflex]

This is currently part of the Humble Bundle if you drop $19.99. Obviously you get other stuff. Not sure if I should bite.

Uplink, Darwinia's and DEFCON are the other games.

[Craymen Edge]

This is currently part of the Humble Bundle if you drop $19.99. Obviously you get other stuff. Not sure if I should bite.

Uplink, Darwinia's and DEFCON are the other games.

What's that, about £13? So not a whole lot less than what they're asking for early access normally. It probably shouldn't since you get all the old stuff too, but it feels a bit cheeky to me.

Its a shame the humble bundles lump all the games in one Steam key, my library is getting to a size where having any more games I don't want on there is a bit of turn off. (eg. Darwinia)

[Sly Reflex]

I got it in the end. Mostly because I want to play Defcon as well as Prison Architect. I'm not really bothered about the other stuff, I wish they'd put the keys in separate, but that way people will sell them on for profits.

[Uncle Dokuro]

I did not even know we had a thread for this game!!! Been playing since alpha 9 build and loving every minute of it.

Prison Architect Alpha 14 dropped today not much was added, but the most wanted feature k-9 units have now been added. The guard dogs are faster then the fatty guards and it kinda hilarious when a dog attacks a persioner that is trying to escape. Larger prisons now run smoother and with better frame rate. You can also sell your prisons now and use that money to build even bigger prisons.

Hopefully next the fix the title splash the interversion logo should come before "Chapter One: Death Row". I also hope they included the rest of the chapters in the next alpha update - or at lest a few more. As it stands now there only chapter one (which is like five mins long) and the sandbox mode (Which is fucken awesome).

[Uncle Dokuro]

Just booted up the linux build on my laptop ... wow what a laggy and buggy mess. I usually play on Window 8, but installed the newest Ubuntu last weekend.

I really love this game, but introversion needs to sort out the linux version badly. Menus take forever to pop up, when planning out a prison you sometime can't delete a wall to make room for a door, have to click over and over to get menus to work. When laying out your prison in the linux version you can really see the lag. You can tell the Windows and Mac version took preference over the linux version.

[Sly Reflex]

Quite some years later and a stream vote after, I am now playing this.

 

Yeah, initial impressions are that it's good, although I've had to tab out a few times to do things the games asked of me because the tutorials are not explained very well.

 

I think the most surprising thing about this is there's a full blown story mode from what I can gather, where events taken in earlier levels spill over into prisoners lives further down the line.

 

I've only played 3 hours so far, but it's got it's hooks in me. Sadly I can't play until next stream though, so I'll have to wait.

 

One thing that I have noticed is that, like with Two Point, the satire is running riot with how the USA deals with its domestic stuff. I mean it's low hanging fruit, but it seems the British devs are artisans at putting the boot in in circumstances like this.

[Sly Reflex]

That's the story finished, along with all the optional objectives.

 

Overall I really enjoyed it, and I might go and do some of the more free form stuff now I'm not tied into streaming it.

 

My biggest complaint is it never really tells you step by step what's going on. It'll give you objectives like asking you to train prisoners, but then it won't explain why the pass rate is so slow, or if you can increase it by altering other things. As a game it's really littered with stuff like this, it's so opaque in that aspect that it can get quite frustrating. Sometimes something you have put in yourself can cause issues, but instead of the game flagging it you're left to troubleshoot yourself, or in my case have people point out things that I should look into that might be causing issues.

 

If Prison Architect 2 ever sees the light of day, they really need to explain in minute detail of what does what and how anything you do might have consequences, it's simply not done well enough in the current version. 

 

Also hats off to @radiofloyd for managing not to play another game alongside the ones I'm playing.  

[radiofloyd]

Haha, someday. But it won’t be Vanquish.