Prison Architect Reviews

loved this game, building my own prison is super fun, but playing as a prisoner is also incredible!

I play this game like an evil capitalist who enjoys the suffering of the downtrodden, and that makes me very happy.

So bad that it's good. You will be confused for so much of your average session of playing this game to the point where it's genuinely hilarious. Cells with canteens right next to them will be dysfunctional because "there's no canteen available". The number of prisoners will fluctuate by 50 to 100 every day either because of deaths or new entries. By about five days you'll have infinitely more prisoners than cells to hold them in. You'll prioritize building a room but your 87 workers will just run around with garbage bags and boxes by some trucks for weeks. Random red squares will appear around prisoners and you'll have no idea why. Clothes will pile up in the laundry room and no matter how many prisoners you hire to do the laundry they won't even enter the room. There will constantly be dead prisoners laying throughout the prison with blood (and sometimes pee) stains on the ground. Doesn't matter if they were beaten to death or if they simply died of starvation, every single corpse ends up in a dramatically big pool of blood. Workers get locked out of the break room during lockdowns. You'll change the settings for a cell so that it's only for maximum security prisoners but all of the medium and low security prisoners will stay for some reason. You'll be forced to watch riots and deaths as the riot police don't move even after you make them. And after all of this 11 out of your 672 prisoners will somehow still be content and say that they are being treated fairly. The whole thing is a complete mess which makes it a really entertaining game.

Game was fun but no support for Apple Silicon and an annoying launcher...

Very buggy, with bugs that have been noted as aware from the dev team going unresolved. They will never be resolved as the game has sunsetted patch support.

Hungry for DLC sales while never fixing any core features, maybe see if the sequel (always works for this type of game) is better.

[h1] It is still amazing game. [/h1] I've played this game from a console since it came out, and I love this game. I was a city builder gamer, and this game got me into like base building type of game, and it was an awesome introduction to that world with this one. [h3]but there are some catches though.[/h3] [h3][b]1. not intuitive or detail explanation on how things work.[/b][/h3] you definitely needs some help from Reddit, wiki to figure out (mostly why canteen, kitchen, in my case) why some things are not working. because the game is not really good at explaining how things should be connected, scheduled and stuff. when I first started this game I had to figure out why my prisoners are not getting fed when I have so many cook, why they do not attend classes that needs, or parole and stuff. it gets frustrating at first, but once you go thru some problems, you will get the hang of it pretty quick. [h3][b]2. Once you complete the successful prototype, there is nothing to do except watching. [/b][/h3] this depends on the players. I like to watch them for a while, and I would start over and try another layout or stuff. however, some may just lose interest real quick because it may feel like you have completed the game, but there's no satisfying ending to it. you may even feel burnt out from it lol [h3][b]3. I would not bother to get DLC?[/b] [/h3] only DLC I've tried is Psych Ward. It is the first DLC ever if I'm correct. So I would say it was one of the quality DLC, and that was mid. Most of the DLC seems to be lack of volume, and honestly it does not add enough new aspect or dynamic to the game. But overall it's still a great game. I would recommend it to play at least once. Buy it when it's on sale since this is an old game.

I really tried to love this game, but everything seems so unexplained, specific and takes a great amount of time to do anything. The building process, should be more like Rimworld, this foundation bs is really bad. Prisoners misbehave and are surpressed, this decreases safety. What? Why? Should I let them do everything? Prisoners complain about everything at the start, it is just annoying. First female prison and there it goes the babies, annoying to get specific cells and nursery. Also annoying to get the female prisoners with babies to always have weapons/drugs/luxury items and not automatically punished. The UI for this game is bad a lot of times and does not explain a lot. I saw a visitor with sign (-). Search online. Even people at forums could not answer what was this. Anyway, I tried to have fun because I really like these kinds of simulators, however it is better to take another game.

games been out forever as one of the first "colony sim" esque experiences, but still lacks any need tab that makes any sense. you could spend 6 hours playing with double the food supply than it states you need for a prison, but still somehow have prisoners going starving. Same with freedom, you could schedule them to spend their entire 16 hour waking day out in the yard or with freetime adn they will still be pissy about not having enough freetime. just not a good colony management game

The game was good until they sold the game to a different studio, now its just riddled with micro-transactions and never gets updated