Discover Top Posts Tagged with #prison architect

Have you played Prison Architect (2015)?

Yes

I watched someone play it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onSep 6, 2025

Requested by anon

#Prison Architect #video games #gaming #video game polls #polls #tumblr polls #indie #indie game dev #indie games #simulation

I played Prison Architect and started a new prison with a different uniform policy for guards and this one guy looks like Price

he's doing such a good job <3

#john price #captain john price #captain price #prison architect #cod price #price cod #cod #call of duty #bucca speaks

Prison Architect has offputting aesthetics to me. This includes Prison Architect 2.

I know, I know, everyone has issues these days. Developers can't just make a game and not have people talk about structural social issues and oppression, yadda yadda. And I know the devs working on Prison Architect were explicitly thinking about how people might react or judge them over the game.

I think it is extremely exhausting for people who want to explore game design spaces to have to put a lot of effort into avoiding being framed as insensitive and problematic. We've reached such levels of this that for some people Minecraft is fundamentally dislikable because it instantiates a colonialist fantasy and makes people think this is okay, normal and unremarkable. I really don't agree with that take.

That being said, that doesn't mean that I don't feel disappointed by Prison Architect's aesthetics. The games look very generic! It's as if it's signaling that prisons are just like any other thing. We have Theme Park, Theme Hospital and now we have Theme Prison. Which in fact is the opposite of what the creative director, Chris Delay said was their intent!

Chris Delay, creative director at developer Introversion Software, told me that it deliberately picked the darkest part of prison life for the first chapter of the game. “It would be very easy to think of it as building a hotel or something,” he said. “Right from the very start, we knew we had to let the player know that this was a different experience, he has to think differently about it.”

(Also very funny last name for anyone in game development)

The aesthetics suggest the idea that the game has a neutral take on prisons. I am sure the developers didn't mean to say anything about anything. The game is trying to be inoffensive. But then you can also read the description of the game on Steam:

Only the world's most ruthless Warden can contain the world's most ruthless inmates.

Uh oh, sisters! This doesn't sound very focus on rehabilitation!

And well, there's a sort of good reason for that. The concept of prisons in game design will whispers into the ear of any mildly creative designer... inverted tower defense... Well, not necessarily tower defense specifically, but you know! Rather than building up your fort to keep people out, you do it to keep people in! It's interesting! For your inverted defense design to be validated, you need rowdy inmates.

---

Oh, jumping to a different thread in this topic. Prison Architect has you executing people the state tells you need to die. Of course I don't need to phrase it like that. Of course, the context of this is a western republic, so it's one of the less bad than if you're doing it in the context of Nazi Germany, but hmm... I just don't think the neutral aesthetics of the game combine well with me executing people.

Worth noting that you do have to research death row as a technology, it's not just thrust upon you.

Interestingly enough, if you execute death row inmates that were actually innocent, you will get fined. Do it three times and it's an instant game over. The moment you execute someone, you know if they were innocent. Which sounds a bit funny. All of it sounds a bit funny, because it's such an garbled idea of how the justice and penal system could work. I don't think this misinforms anyone, but does make the in-game prison appear (artificially?) more just. Ultimately, as far as I can tell, it's just a gameplay mechanic to force you to keep death row inmates around for longer, which provides a challenge.

---

And you know what, going back to the Steam description -- I do feel moderately motivated about the idea of containing some bad sons of bitches. By adding any amount of fantasy into the setting, you can have that, the fantasy that you're sure these people need to be here and stay here. But Prison Architect occupies this... diffuse position. The inmates are analogues for modern real world inmates, with all of their nuance. But they also look like very abstracted human beings and are mechanically simple. It's just kind of a straight forward game overall. The real world theme of Prison Architect implies nuance, but its mechanics don't really model that nuance.

Prison Architect's game design direction, at least in some sense, prefers that inmates be a problem that needs to be suppressed violently. And that's fine! This is the mechanical direction that I want the game to explore. I just think that if you make Gulag Simulator it should not have the aesthetics of Sims 2. Prison Architect is doing something like that but much less egregious.

And to be clear, I don't know that I care much about how this is problematic. Rather it's just that it feels... a bit spiritually impoverishing? There is the absence of something, a void. It's just kinda boring! Man, sorry to whoever had to draw all that shit, you did an OK job, okay? I just complain a lot on the internet.

We should strive for a balance between treating the medium very seriously and "it's just a video game".

---

But yeah there's so many other ways this could have been themed. And I understand why it was themed this way, it has the widest appeal, or rather the narrow anti-appeal. A lot of other takes would alienate more people. Boring them is a less bad outcome. And the current aesthetics are pretty flexible, you can project on them.

Anyway, here's a bunch of alternative themes that visited my mind:

Butcher Bay: You play as a corporation in the business of containing, exploiting and/or rehabilitating inmates through your private prisons. The theme dispenses with any pretense that you are benevolent. You're trying to find ways to maximize long-term profit. Maybe that's putting your prisoners through a program that gives them a useful skill and you a cut of their earnings once they get out, maybe it's something more violent. Of course, you get to set up big monitors that flash demotivational messages! Hey, I'm sure the other corporations are much worse?

Maxsec Dungeon Keeper: It's Dungeon Keeper, but instead of keeping heroes out, you keep heroes in. Bonus points if you brainwash and corrupt them to join your side! How evil! But is it actually unethical if they're having more fun now?

Bleeding Hearts Penitentiary: Your focus is to ensure good social outcomes for your inmates. Society might be crapsack, but your institution is the Mother Teresa of prisons -- well, minus the deeply objectionable parts of Mother Teresa. The prisoners are rendered in a high detail way, borderline fantasy, but still somewhat grounded. It could even look like everyone is out of a dating VN. You really want your roguish purple-haired murderer to repent and do well in life! Your relationship to the inmates is both that of antagonism but also they borderline feel like your own unruly RPG characters.

Supervillain Supermax: You don't need supervillains per se, they could just be your average level 12 D&D character. Ultimately they're very dangerous, they're superpowered and they've caused a lot of trouble and now you need to contain them. Better make sure you have a fallback for when the pyrokinetic's suppression collar malfuctions!

Moonscorch Reality Failure: OK, this one is kind of cheating, very tenuous relationship with the prison system. Everyone in your facility isn't there because they've done something wrong, but rather it's about what they are. They all look like normal people and at least most of the time, they are. But unfortunately, each and every one of them is also a potential reality breach that under certain conditions will trigger and cause them to morph into monsters, warping reality around them into a nightmarish landscape, which may or may not relate to their individual neurosis. Suffice to say, this is very bad. These poor fuckers can't even die anymore! Your job is to contain them and make their life be somehow tolerable. Your job is especially to avoid cascade triggers and do very good damage control. You may set the psychiatric-care-allegory dial anywhere from 0 to 10. Personally, I was just thinking 0, since I didn't consider that until finishing writing this paragraph. But other values could also be really interesting.

#anpost #prison architect #politics #game design #vidya #don't take this too seriously #man this is too long

I’ve realized that how evil I am in a game is often the reverse of how evil you’re expected to be.

I tend to be a relatively nice guy in Crusader Kings III and RimWorld, but in Cities: Skylines, Planet Zoo, Prison Architect, and literally any theme park game I’m a total maniac.

I’ll literally put coolers in the elephants’ habitat in Planet Zoo just to make them uncomfortable, but God forbid I even care if my wife cheats on me in CK3.

#crusader kings 3 #crusader kings iii #planet zoo #cities skylines #prison architect #rimworld #gaming #am i evil?#yes i am

bruh prison architect got me FUCKED UP I AM CURRENTLY PLAYING THIS ALL DAY

WHY DOES THIS GAME TICKLE MY BRAIN IN THE RIGHT SPOT?

#WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY #AUEEEEEEEEEEEGHHHH #prison architect #gaming #gaming too hard #crap

Top 15 Best City Building Games For PC (Ranked Fun To Most Fun)

Several city-building or colony simulation games have been released on PC in recent years. Each one has its own set of difficulties, twists, and turns. Some are quite difficult, while others are quite relaxing.

If you're looking for a city-building game, here are fifteen to check out: Top 15 Best City Building Games For PC (Ranked Fun To Most Fun) | GAMERS DECIDE

#Medieval Dynasty #Timberborn #Going Medieval #Settlement Survival #Surviving Mars #Against the Storm #anno 1800 #Tropico 6 #Foundation #Farthest Frontier #prison architect #Banished #Frostpunk #cities: skylines #Rimworld

somehow i never bothered to build a death row block in prison architect. a bit tedious of a system. you only get one death row inmate like once an in game week. they only stay in their cells or to go to parole for death row appeal. prison liability for an incorrect execution is a percentage that goes down if they fail an appeal, and if under 10% the prison is no longer at fault if it is later clear theyre executed on false charges.

if they succeed in their clemency appeal, they enter the regular prison population as a max sec.

i thought it macabre that guides tell you to make a seating room for an audience, but true. as during an execution a group of witnesses, related to the prisoner or the victims, arrive to watch.