Prison Architect
Build and Manage A Maximum Security Prison.
Build and manage a Maximum Security Prison. As the sun casts it’s early morning rays on a beautiful patch of countryside the clock starts ticking. You’ve got to crack on and build a holding cell to detain the job lot of maximum security prisoners that are trundling to your future prison on their yellow bus. As your workmen lay the last brick you don’t have a moment to let them rest as they need to get started on the first proper cell block so you can make room for the next prisoner intake. Once they’ve all got a place to lay their weary heads the fun can really start.
You’ll need a canteen, infirmary and a guard room, oh, and don’t forget to plumb in a toilet, or things will get messy, but what about a workout area? Or solitary confinement cells? Or an execution chamber?
Game Discussion
Steam User 61
> Build a functioning prison
> Get 5 legendary prisoners
> Build them their own prison on an island
> They start a small fight with normal guards
> They kill all 60 guards in their prison
> They find the armoury
> Call in a riot helicopter
> Prisoners shoot all riot guards until there's nothing left
> Seal off their prison
> Regret having those 5 legendary prisoners in the same 20 mile radius
> Download a toxic gas mod
> Gas the prisoners
> Prisoners survive
> Download army staff mod
> They shoot and kill all 40 heavily armed military units
> Stop worrying about that prison and wait for them to starve
> The prisoners die from starvation after 50 days of their non stop riot
Steam User 92
---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☑ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond (Re-playable with mods)
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10
Steam User 15
Prison Architect is one of those games, kind of like the sims, with which you occasionally have the brief moments of clarity where you realize that you're wasting your time scheduling and organizing the lives of simulated people and you get the sudden urge to do something productive in real life like build some furniture or take a cooking class.
Thankfully these moments pass and you can go back to playing the game.
Steam User 38
This is a fun game. It's challenging. Although there are times where the simulation seems to be not performing tasks for unknown reasons, you can typically figure it out after some time. I'd say the biggest challenge in this game is just getting a fully functioning prison that can house 50 inmates without constant danger and incidents.
You have to really balance how fast you expand and build. It's a lot of trial and error. Every addition to your prison needs a few days of time to settle in before you add more rooms and things to do. Be careful with taking on too much! And focus on security, patrols and informants. Don't forget to play the game within the game, or everything will turn to chaos. Have fun. I love all of you, forever.
Steam User 30
Recommended, with a caveat.
tl;dr - Amazing game! Problematic publisher.
I bought Prison Architect back in 2014. I loved it! It's still one of the best games of its kind (i.e. Rimworld, Keplerth, etc.).
Here's the caveat...
I came back a few years ago to find that Paradox now owns it. There are several criticisms to be made about them, but the one thing that I absolutely despise about Paradox is their insistence on inserting their launcher between me and the game I want to play. I don't care about your ads, Paradox. I just want to play the game. I own a few other Paradox games and hardly touch them for this reason. That launcher elicits an "instant uninstall" reflex.
Here's the upside...
The pre-Paradox version of the game is still available in the Beta settings, and with a little filename frickery you can bypass the launcher if you play the older version.
Steam User 14
I know this game does not have the greatest reputation after paradox basically destroyed it with DLCs and not updating major bugs still in the game but the truth is this game is still extremely fun in 2023/2024 and it seems paradox finally fixed the multiplayer too and have been having a ton of fun playing this game with friends
Steam User 9
Overall it's a pretty good game, however it's obvious that Paradox has left important and notable updates aside instead adding irrelevant content and features with little to none bug fixes (and this game has a considerable ammount of bugs, specially in the campaign). Meanwhile, relevant additions usually come in the form of DLCs, which some of them should have been just normal updates (so nothing new coming from Paradox after all), and now that Paradox seems to be focusing on Prison Architect 2, it seems that this game will just get completely abandoned.
From my personal experience, this game is fun at the beginning, but after some days it might get repetitive and boring, especially Escape Mode (in which by just using a lighter you can escape any prison), however it has a certain replayability as this is the type of game you'll be leaving and coming back to over the months or even years.
I'd say this game is fun and worth giving a try, however don't expect more content or updates being added, and the upcoming Prison Architect 2 might be more worth it after all, who knows.