Upon firing up this bad boy and proceeding towards the tutorials, I immediately begin having flashbacks to 1997 when a much (MUCH) younger me came home with my own copy of Theme Hospital. From the very start it is apparent that Prison Architect not only draws its inspiration from those classic simulation games, but flaunts it so boldly as a tribute to what was once a great age in gaming. But this isn’t just some copy/paste clone here, as there is a huge wealth of gameplay hiding underneath the vintage roots from which the game has sprouted.

New players are eased into the game via a short story, which tells the tale of a prisoner on death row. Now you’d be forgiven for thinking everything is fun and games at the local prison as the games general appearance doesn’t exactly scream ‘serious’ but lying in wait under the surface is a collection of more mature, sometimes even dark themes just waiting to ambush you when you least expect it. This notion of a more mature adult undertone becomes apparent near the end of the tutorial, where the player is confronted with a death row inmate.

Although there isn’t a choice given during this scenario the game wastes no effort in laying out the implications of this prisoners death, showing you the last moments of his life starting with his visit from the priest all the way to his end destination in the chair. By now you’re probably wondering where all those funny moments you had hoped for have gone, your innocence has been torn out and you’re alone in a dark cell wondering where things went wrong. Let me clear up one thing here, which is that these tough moral choices are offered to the player via this feature, but they are not enforced. It is entirely possible to have a prison without any form of capital punishment, and you have total freedom to make it as secure as you want it. Want to build an easy-going low risk prison? You can provide TV’s and pool tables for all those felons. Want to punish them with an iron first? Give them very little freedom by restricting how much time they can spend outside their cells. The Prison is truly yours to command.

To facilitate the construction of your dream prison (I can now cross that off the “I will never get to say these phrases ever” list) the game provides you with a series of building tools, from which you place blockish shapes to form the foundations for various rooms. Once a room is marked down, your builder NPC’s will begin work constructing the scaffolding and walls, leaving you with an empty room. From here you can designate what purpose the room will serve, be it a cell, dining hall or even a shower room. The game makes things easier for you by listing the prerequisite furnishings needed to fully stamp the room and make it fit for its purpose. For example, a shower room won’t become fully functional until it has at least 1 shower head with a supply of water running to it (possibly some soap on a rope too, if the rumours are to be believed...).

Pro Tip: Don’t spend all your money on making things look pretty at the start, because you may just forget to setup a wall around your prison. If this happens, when the prisoners tell you they are going for their shower, they actually mean they are going to run straight out of the prison. This resulted in my 8 guards beating the slower inmates into a bloody pulp, seemingly to vent their frustrations after loosing half of the inmate population less than 10 minutes into the game.

Speaking of NPC’s, your hired staff will act as your physical presence in the game. There’s a variety of different job roles to go around ranging from the typical prison guards who are there to open doors and beat down rowdy prisoners, all the way to the catering staff who will dish out the days gruel onto the inmates dinner trays. Each NPC serves a different purpose in the game and its learning each roles function that will ensure your prison runs much smoother. Get these staffing levels wrong however, and you may very well find yourself in a spot of bother when all your guards are lying face down in a pool of their own blood.

The current build I’ve been playing (Alpha V10) has also just added 2 new features worthy of noting. The first is an anger mechanic which will ensure that the inmates will react more human-like when they feel they are being mistreated. The way this works is fairly simple, but ingenious in its implementation. Behind the scenes is a thermometer of sorts, which measures the overall ‘tension’ currently brewing in the prison. Placed as markers along the scope of this scale are each individuals boiling points, a marker which denotes how angry they have to be in order to start becoming aggressive to either guards of other inmates. The boiling points are different for each prisoner, and are determined by hidden traits assigned to each inmate, so spending some time watching specific trouble makers may help you to determine which ones are likely to start causing a ruckus. The truly clever part here is that this boiling point will react to several conditions, like if another inmate was recently punished for bad behaviour, this will help to reduce the other inmates boiling points and act as a deterrent.

The second new feature is the addition of riot police and paramedics. These are classed as emergency services and join the fire-fighters as an emergency response unit with special abilities. When all hell breaks loose and a riot does kick off, the game becomes much tenser with battle music of sorts playing in the background and a plethora of ambient crowd shouting noises to make things seem more immersive. A riot spells disaster for you by throwing several obstacles in your path which require attention before any sense of control is regained. Prisoners who manage to fully overrun the guards in a building will eventually claim that building as their own, causing you to lose vision of the interior and subsequently stopping all standard prison guards from entering the captured structure. A cool feature easily overlooked here is that the prisoners can claim the guards weapons and keys once they have been dispatched, meaning those angry thugs who just beat your guards to death with their hands just got an upgrade to their lethality. I think the phrase “He’s got a piece, cheese it!” fits well here.

During a crisis like this, the player is forced to take on a more active role by assuming direct control of either 1 or several riot police squads. Being heavily armoured makes things a lot easier for them to deal with the rioting miscreants, and only by using them will you stand a chance to regaining your prison. Controlling the riot guards feels almost like an RTS game, in which you must determine the best strategy for your guards in order to subdue the hordes of rioting prisoners. This coupled with the fog of war makes for a refreshing change of pace, just when you think things are starting to calm down.

Now the game is not flawless, and like everything else has aspects that could stand to be improved. The most prevalent issues for me were usually during construction, where builders would either stop half way through a job or just point blank refuse to carry out the work at all, however this was easily fixed by simply cancelling the job and reissuing the order. I also had OCD nightmares when my workers kept leaving all their raw materials around the prison. There’s nothing quite like seeing a random toilet seat residing next to your electric chair. We must remember that this is game is still in its alpha stages, and as such overlooking this issues is easily done. Hell, most of the time the bugs add to the games charms, with prisoners doing outright stupid things, like sneaking into the warden’s office just to crouch behind his favourite filing cabinet.

I find it hard to put a score or stamp on something that isn’t even close to being a final product, and with a beta phase still to come, Prison Architect could still make strides in an all new direction before we come to something classed as a complete release. With that being said, my experiences with the game in its current state leave me wanting more, and the flood of nostalgia this game gives me provides that extra bit of warmth that keeps me warm on those cold dark nights. The gaming market has been sorely missing a decent sim like this, and if the developers stay true to their roots I have little doubt that Prison Architect will be a smash hit when it gets its final release.

4/5 shanks, would riot again.

For those of you interested in getting early access to the games Alpha state and all future releases including the finished product check out their official website found here or their steam page found here. Both outlets offer a tiered system akin to a kickstarter payment play in which you can pay more for limited edition extras, however the base cost for the alpha as of now is $29.99 or £19.99 depending on if you spell colour correctly or not. And with that slight jab at 'Murica, I shall leave you with this, the bio of my favourite inmate who has bugged out and has been sitting on that bench for the past 6 days straight.