Prison Architect

Despite the few bugs, I can’t praise Prison Architect enough: the fact that I’ve spent over 125 hours in the game pretty much speaks for itself. The mixture of construction and management simulation is balanced perfectly, and the gameplay is both enjoyable and rewarding; even at its most frustrating, it kept me wanting more. A longer, more in-depth campaign mode wouldn’t go amiss, but for fans of sandbox games it’s really a must play.

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Some of these ants are jerks and need to be locked up though. They’ve been convicted of murder, break and enters, theft, and all manner of other violent crimes, so you’ll need to build cells and other special facilities in order keep your staff and the other prisoners safe. You’re presented with a very dysfunctional ant farm that needs to be controlled and managed to a point where everyone is happy. This can actually feel fairly impossible at times since there are so many things going on under the surface. It’s a lot to take in at first.

After a poorly handled start, Prison Architect becomes one of the most in-depth, satisfying builder games in a long time. It’s a shame the non-sandbox options aren’t better, and the nature of the simulation inherently lacks the joy and beauty of other subjects, but few other games have done such a good job at capturing not just the nature of the job they simulate, but also the mindset required to do it ‘properly’.

Prison Architect is a great simulator that made the transition from computers to console admirably.

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Porting PC simulation games to consoles is fraught with danger, with systemic complexities and control issues abound. Thankfully, Prison Architect manages to avoid most of these pitfalls, and serves as an exemplar of how the genre should make the transition in future.

Prison Architect is a full-on sim that will eat your time. If you fancy a dark look inside the running of a prison, look no further.

Prison Architect is not friendly to new users, requires patching of numerous errors, and provides a disappointing campaign but its key elements – construction and management – are amazingly executed.

A place called prison and a place called jail

Emerging from Early Access lean and focused, Prison Architect is one of the best management games in a long time.

There is only one major difficulty for any reviewer of Introversion's incarceration fest. It isn't deciding whether or not to recommend it. I very much do. It is that anyone who is interested in Prison Architect is already likely to have picked it up. Many of us have already had 36 months of early access to amuse ourselves by building giant toilets with some prison beds inside. And those who haven't got it by now may be quite happy to continue ignoring it. I think this would be an enormous shame. If this is you, I want to tell you that it is a game worth playing. If you already have a copy, ho...