Have you ever stopped and thought to yourself “I would love to run a prison”? No? Me either. I’m not saying Prison Architect might make you reconsider your stance – however – it does manage to make the micromanaging of a prison utterly compelling. Forget your city, roller-coaster and zoo tycoons – Prison Architect is a seriously dense simulation game that isn’t afraid to tackle the nitty gritty of life behind bars with a hint of brevity for good measure.
When starting a game you have the option of building your own prison from scratch, using a pre-built prison or downloading other players prisons from the awesomely titled World of Wardens. From dealing with power generators to plumbing, I decided to go with a pre-built prison as I have always sucked majorly at building things. Once you’ve selected your prison you can then set the budget of your prison (from little to unlimited) and other numerous parameters to fit your preferred style of play. This includes choosing the warden for the prison who come with their own set of perks. Will you rule pragmatically and use prisoner reform as your greatest weapon? Or will you rule with an iron fist and ironically, take no prisoners?
From there you’re then thrust into the life of a prison warden. You’ll need to organise a regime for your prisoners consisting of things such as a time for showering, yard time and the most important of all, meal times. You’ll also need to organise patrol routes for guards, security systems, drug programs, metal detectors, visitation rooms, doctors…the list goes on and on. You can even adjust the policies of your prison. That means if a prisoner tries to Shawshank it out of one of your poop filled pipes (which they will) and you catch them in the act, you can decide how severe their punishment will be.
After a kitchen fire, a small riot and a few unsuccessful great escapes – I finally felt like I had a hold on the game. That was until a legendary prisoner was transferred to my prison. Now if Pokémon and Barney Stinson has taught us anything, it’s that legendary things are good. When it comes to Prison Architect, legendary things suck. All my legendary prisoner did was kill my staff, recruit more members for his gang and break whatever he got his hands on. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to stop him from disrupting my otherwise well-managed prison.
Although I’m not proud of my actions in this particular instance – these are the sort of scenarios Prison Architect will constantly be assaulting you with. On top of balancing the everyday managerial tasks of running a prison, fires of the metaphorical and literal kind will pop up everywhere and how you deal with them usually comes down to what’s best for your prison in the long run
The PS4 version of Prison Architect was primarily tested for the purpose of this review.