Prison Architect

Prison Architect is a popular simulation building game where players take on the role of a warden, using various resources to create the most secure prison to restrain even the most dangerous inmates. Players not only need to construct various living and security facilities for the prison, but also recruit administrators and staff to manage the prison and ensure no escape is possible. Due to limited starting funds, players must complete initial funding projects to receive more money. Carefully choose the initial construction and staff hiring to ensure the prison's healthy development. The game also supports an editor to showcase your creativity and ideas, allowing you to build your own prison, invite other players to participate in escape attempts, and enjoy even more fun.

Gameplay of Prison Architect:

The game is a top-down 2D, with a partially 3D mode,[6] highly modifiable construction and management simulation, where the player has been hired by the CEO of a for-profit prison company to take control of building and running a prison. The player's role is of both architect and governor with sandbox micromanagement themes, responsible for managing various aspects of the prison, including building facilities, connecting utilities, and managing staff. The player needs to recruit specific staff to unlock some aspects of the game, e.g., information about the prison's finances is unavailable without an accountant.

The player is responsible for the finances of their prison and for meeting the needs of their prisoners, e.g., sanitation. The player is able to implement various reform and labour programmes that reduce the specific prisoner's recidivism rate. The player tells the prisoners what to do indirectly by setting their schedule.The player can allow additional conditions to be applied to their game, such as simulated temperature, gang activities and more extreme weather conditions, to increase the difficulty of the game and to simulate a prison in conditions nearer to reality. Players may opt to build a female prison, which necessitates the construction of nursing and childcare facilities for female inmates that are accompanying an infant. A player's prison is graded by an in-game report according to various factors, including recidivism rate of prisoners that have left the prison, overall happiness and violence levels within the prison.

Prisoners are classed according to five different security levels. Each corresponds to a different temperament and length of sentence, with, on intake, the higher security levels with more difficult reputations and more severe crimes but also awarding extra cashflow. Death Row prisoners arrive with a "clemency" gauge, expressed as a percentage. This percentage can be lowered with successive failed Death Row Appeal sessions. Below a certain percentage, the prisoner can be executed without legal backlash to the facility regardless of the innocence of the prisoner. Should the Death Row prisoner pass an appeal, he may be released from the prison or transferred into the general prison population. There is also a Protective Custody class that players can assign prisoners to.

Players can be "fired" by the CEO by reaching a failure condition, and the player is then prevented from further managing that prison. There are also options for "creative mode" available on prison creation wherein finance can be ignored, research is fully unlocked, and building is instant, among other changes designed to present a freer sandbox experience.

Staffs of Prison Architect:

There are various staff members you can hire to carry out certain tasks, such as administration, security, maintenance, financial management, and health. From the start, only a few staff members can be hired—workmen, guards, cooks, and the all-important warden. Once he is on your staff, you are able to start researching other staff members through the bureaucracy system.

Administrators

By far the most important members of your staff (at least for the time being), the six administrators can research additional staff members to help make your job easier. Each administrator needs his or her own office, a 4x4 room equipped with a chair, desk, and filing cabinet.

The Warden: Only one warden can be hired. The warden will research the other members of the administration team, who can then be hired to research staff members or abilities that apply to their respective positions. The warden also allows access to the regime report, where you can alter the prisoners' daily schedule and the quality of their meals.

The Accountant: The accountant gains access to government grant programs for extra funding, allows you to go over your daily operating budget as long as your balance is high enough to cover the difference. She opens up the finance and valuation reports where you can take a look at your spending versus earnings, and assess the value of your prison, from physical plant to safety.

The Chief: When the chief is hired, he is able to research the ability to set up security cameras, deploy guards, and create patrol routes and a lot more.

The Foreman: The foreman oversees the day-to-day maintenance of your prison. He can supply access to the cloning tool, to easily duplicate areas such as cells, and he can research cleaning staff to pick up after your prisoners, both inside and outside.

The Psychologist: For an inside look at your prisoners’ mental state, hire the psychologist. He prepares the needs report, and breaks down what each prisoner wants in a handy bar graph. It will show how many are hungry, tired, scared, bored, and so on.

The Lawyer: When the lawyer is hired, he grants access to a variety of legal loopholes and helps you bend some of the rules for greater control over your prison.

General Staff

Workman: You start out with eight of these indispensable employees. Workmen build new buildings, install furniture, take in deliveries, put out the garbage, and make simple repairs.

Guard: Escorting prisoners, finding contraband, and patrolling the halls are the main responsibilities of your guards. The more the merrier, as prisoners always need supervision, because otherwise they will try to sneak knives from the kitchen, dig escape tunnels, get into fistfights, and destroy the fixtures in their cells. Only guards are able open jail doors, so those guys are important.

Cook: Prisoners are human, and they need food. Cooks take care of unloading shipments of ingredients, cooking food, serving meals, and washing dishes. The more inmates you have, the larger a kitchen and cooking staff you will want.

Doctor: Prisoners will injure themselves, others, and staff members whenever they’re in a bad mood and are presented with the opportunity to do so. Doctors can heal up anyone who has an injury, and if a case is particularly bad, send them to the medical ward for care.

Janitor: Armed with a mop and a desire to clean, janitors are not essential, but a great addition to your team unless you like your floors covered in cracks, footprints, and algae from broken toilets (you can thank your prisoners for that).

Gardener: Gardeners are like janitors, but they clean outdoor areas of your prison and chop down trees. They are probably the least important people on your payroll, unless you are very invested in chopping down trees to sell or refine the wood.

Dog Handler: Armed with dog leash with a vicious dog that is able to sniff narcotics or smelly contraband. When a fight break, he and his dog will attempt to stop it. Dogs will also kill prisoners who knocked unconscious or killed their handler.

Armed Guard: An advanced guard who is armed with a shotgun to shoot prisoners on sight if told so, easy to stop fights or riots. Armed Guards are able to enter controlled areas.

Useful Tips of Prison Architect:

The more guards you hire, the higher security your prison will have against dangerous prisoners.

Hiring guard dogs will increase the security of your prison as the dogs are way faster than the prisoners and normal guards, but guard dogs have a liability to kill the prisoner if the dog gets mad.

Ordering your guards to patrol in cell blocks by the cells will reduce Prisoner's danger rate and will help prisoners to not try to dig a tunnel out of their cell.

Alternatively, put windows on corridor side so guards get a line of sight into cells.

A good way to prevent fights in the showers is to put a shower in every cell so the prisoners can take a shower during Freetime and Lockup (you should also add drains around the shower head.) Having a shower head in each cell can remove the need for the Shower room and schedule all together.

Every room except the Solitary, Execution, Morgue and Storage needs to have at least one guard stationed in it. If the room is behind staff only doors or better and is marked staff only in the Deployment screen, it is not quite as important, but still recommended.

Riot Guards may be effective against prisoner's attacks, but they will increase the danger level even if they do nothing.

Make sure to add a Guard on any infirmary only if there are usual fights, because when Prisoners go to the infirmary, they may attack doctors.

Position your Visitation Room carefully. Keep it away from the prison population and in a secure wing like where your offices are, anything which is behind a few jail doors to make it harder for angry inmates to reach. You don't want to be responsible for the deaths of visitors due to an unguarded and vulnerable room. Also, add guard dogs outside visitation so contraband does not get into the prison through visitors.

Build your Armoury in a secure place. If the prisoners are rioting or are trying to escape, they will try to break into the Armoury room so they can steal shotguns, pistols, and batons from there.

Armed guards will fight with the inmates using the fists, and will use the shotguns only if their lives are in danger (they are highly injured, or the inmates have dangerous weapons). After you hired at least one armed guard, you can press the "Free-Fire" button in the bottom-right corner, and they will start using the shotguns every possible time for attacks.

If you have armed guards on patrol or stationed, every prisoner near them, except ones with the stoical reputation, will be temporarily suppressed and will be less likely to cause trouble. You can see how many are suppressed in the danger status bar. However, armed guards also slightly increase the danger level, so it's a careful balance.

If you have Dog Handlers on patrol, every prisoner they pass will be sniffed by the dog and if they have drugs, poison, or any other smelly stuff, they will be discovered and searched.

The Tazer rollout in Bureaucracy will make your guards more expensive but is very valuable in case of a riot. Every single guard will be able to knock out one prisoner instantly, making it much more difficult for the prisoners to outnumber the guards.

The body armor also makes your guards more expensive but gives them better chances in combat with prisoners. Without body armor, having less than 1 guard to every attacking prisoner is very risky and likely to fail. With body armor, 2 guards together can usually take 3 attacking prisoners without too much trouble (meaning a riot of 30 prisoners only needs 20-25 guards to contain it, rather than 30 or more).

Combining both the Tazers and the body armor makes your guards extremely formidable. Riots of 50 prisoners could feasibly be stopped by only 20 guards.

The entrance to your canteen is a great place to put metal detectors, as prisoners will be forced to walk through them multiple times a day, twice for each meal.

Player Comments of Prison Architect:

If you're interested in this game, just buy it. It has workshop integration with an active modding community. Earlier tonight I changed the theme to star wars with a press of the button. This is a very addictive game where real time begins to speed by in a blur. 5 minutes becomes 5 hours and you only noticed because you need to use the restroom. There is a wonderful charm about it and the fat little characters. There is a lot of micromanagement so if you're the kind of person that hates to think, can't oil your brain because it hurts, well then you should pass. It's not overly complicated but the game doesn't hold your hand starting out. It's like bam build a prison. The only downside is struggling to figure out why things aren't being built, or populated. This may further confuse someone since it is alpha which makes it difficult to distinguish between a bug and something you aren't doing correctly. Other than that you should enjoy this game.

I don't normally comment on games I own, but in this case I will make an exception. Its not a review of the game, the game is about building a prison and managing it and the prisoners in it. Does that sound good? Then buy, if not then watch some youtube videos and judge for yourself if its the kind of game you would like to spend some of your time on.The reason I am commenting on this game is that for me its an example of Early Access done correctly. The Devs released a game in a playable but basic state and have consistently updated the game with new features, whilst listening to feedback from the community. Nothing was rushed, no hyperbole that left early buyers feeling short changed later, just a consistent, honest approach from a team of developers that both care about the community the game has created and the quality of the game they have produced.Its been a pleasure to play it and watch the game grow into the 1.0 launch and it means I have a connection to the game that I wouldnt have developed if I had just bought the game at 1.0.Introversion have shown what a beautiful thing Early Access can be.

All these reviews talk about how much fun it can be to create a draconian panopticon of hell, but I find it much more profitable to push on rehabilitation. You get money every time you take in prisoners, so it pays to be constantly taking them in, and you get a nice bonus whenever you release someone on parole and they don't reoffend. And while housing them in constant terror can reduce their will to re-offend, it's rather difficult to get that bonus check from a dead man.And the great thing about this game? Both philosophies are perfectly valid. They each have benefits and flaws, and it's your job to strike the balance between the two to get your desired result. Go on, experiment; it's just the lives of criminals you're tinkering with, after all.Adendum: the five-mission story mode is one of the better tutorials I've seen in a primarily sandbox game, both in terms of setting up game mechanics as well as for the story itself.

Conclusion:

Prison Architect suits players who enjoy planning, budgeting, and problem-solving in a busy setting. You design layouts, place rooms, and set routines while keeping staff paid and inmates calm. Meanwhile, incidents can occur without warning, so decisions must be clear and timely. The Prison Architect APK brings the prison-building experience to touch controls, giving you a straightforward way to design, manage, and respond on your phone. It focuses on practical choices and steady growth, which helps new and experienced players stay in control.