Snitches Get Stitches...or Mostly Dead. A Tale of Prison Architect Failure.

As I write this I'm sitting and waiting for day 2 of the Steam Summer Sale to start.  This morning I got a notification that every item currently on my wishlist is on sale!  Oh, the joyous glee!  Before I bust out the ol' card and start chalking up some purchases I'm trying to strategically plan where my money will be best spent.  Do I go for NIER:  Automata, a game I mostly put onto my list because of how much I enjoyed the bizarre Bayonetta?  Or Shadow Tactics:  Blades of the Shogun?  Or do I cave and finally buy Dishonored 2 which I haven't purchased because of all the negative reviews I've read about performance issues?  Decisions, decisions.

But, I didn't really want to write about the Steam Sale.  So enough about that!  Before the sale started I decided that I should look back into Prison Architect.  I had purchased it when it was in early access and, honestly, wasn't that impressed--at the time there wasn't a lot of content--there was one campaign mission that served as a very brief tutorial and then there was sandbox mode where you build your own prison from the ground up.  I messed around and clocked a few hours, but then shelved it and didn't really give it much thought.  I didn't pay attention to major updates and didn't even really see when it finally came out as a full release.

Now....40 hours of play later, I can highly recommend that anyone who might have a copy of Prison Architect hanging out in their library should give it another chance.  There has been oodles of content added and it has become a fabulous management game.  Not that I have necessarily mastered it...hahahahahaha...NO.

Since it had been quite a long time since my initial forays into building and managing a prison, I decided that the best place to start was with the campaign missions.  The campaign has been beefed up to include five scenarios that cover different aspects of prison management and also tell stories about the prisoners themselves.  From these campaign scenarios I learned valuable skills like how to extinguish fires (first lesson--make sure you don't command the firefighters to stand directly in the fire...I made this mistake and they all died) and how to effectively put down a riot.  If it has been awhile since you've played, you definitely want to check out these handy tutorials/stories.

After satisfactorily completing the campaign scenarios I decided that I was ready to manage my own prison.  Before you even start there are a number of decisions to be made...firstly, what kind of manager do you want to be?  The iron-fisted, punishment oriented warden--the kind who strictly enforces the rules and makes prison a miserable place to be?  Or, the kinder, gentler warden who seeks to rehabilitate your prisoners so they can re-enter society and be successful?  I decided to go with rehabilitation--what can I say, I like being the good guy.

Once I had settled on my play style I had another big decision to make, something that was also added after I had previously stopped playing.  Did I want my prison to be for male or female prisoners?  I had been watching the newest season of Orange is the New Black and felt inspired to make a lady prison.  I quickly learned that female prisoners have different needs than male prisoners and that some of them who have babies require special "family cells."  Family cells must be built larger than traditional cells and require their own special dining area called a "nursery."  Managing family cells can be a bit of a pain--they take up a lot of space and you have to make sure that they are connected to a kitchen so that food is delivered.

This is my faux-Litchfield--daily shankings included.

The big decisions had been made and it was time to start--I set my intake at a conservative 5 prisoners per day and got to working planning out my new faux-Litchfield.  Another new feature is the ability to accept grants--these grants are aimed towards expanding your prison and reward you for successfully adding new features--they pay an initial bonus upon acceptance and then an additional bonus upon completion.  Some grants are easy to fulfill, for example, one of the first grants you accept is to build the basics your prison will need to operate--a holding cell, kitchen and canteen, as well as administrative offices for your staff.  As you progress grants expand to include things like increasing the capacity of your prison or adding specific staff.  The most difficult grant to complete so far has been related to education.  Having one prisoner pass the general education test is very difficult...at least it has been for me.

My prison hiccupped along and continued to grow to a respectable size of about 100 prisoners.  I established a laundry and workshop, classrooms for education, drug treatment, and behavioral and alcoholics counseling.  My re-offending rate was fairly low and I felt semi-successful.  It's when you start to feel comfortable that things really start to go wrong.  All of a sudden I had 14 escapees!  14!  A group of prisoners had managed to dig an escape tunnel under my fences (yes, I had fences because perimeter fence is super expensive...that was a mistake).  As I scrambled my workmen to fill in those tunnels I received an angry phone call from the CEO threatening to shut down the prison if anyone else escaped.  All my hard work was going down the drain!  I increased the number of patrolling guards and managed to avoid losing by the skin of my teeth.

Faux-Litchfield has continued to grow and I am now managing over 200 prisoners.  This hasn't come without complications.  It is essential that you make sure that your prison has room to grow.  My one kitchen and canteen were swamped and feeding the entire population had become almost impossible.  I had to build another kitchen and canteen to feed the masses.  Somehow, the prisoners who were automatically assigned to each canteen got screwed up--my family cells were no longer receiving food and some of my prisoners were starving.  This is when I discovered the food distribution setting that can be unlocked once you've researched logistics.  (Remember that right clicking a kitchen will erase all its connections to any attached canteens--this was my mistake)

Once the kitchen fiasco was finally cleared up I ran into another major difficulty--my prison was experiencing a number of deaths on an almost daily basis.  After some Googling about why this was happening I learned that any prisoner who is identified as a "snitch" has a VERY GOOD (like almost 100%) chance of getting shanked.  To protect these highly susceptible prisoners meant that they had to be identified and then placed into protective custody.  This meant I had to design a special wing for them and try to re-arrange the already complicated regime so that they could remain safe.  I still haven't completely figured this out and my snitches are still getting iced on a regular basis.  I've tried finessing the schedule so that maximum security prisoners and protective custody never cross paths....but for some reason they seem to always wind up together somehow.  My spiritual guidance classes have become a popular place for offing the snitches....sheesh.

The full release of Prison Architect has seen it grow from a simple management game into something much more complicated and even more challenging.  It's definitely worth your time to re-boot it and check out the new features.  I'm going to be heading back to the drawing board to try to solve some of the more pressing issues in my prison.