With Orange Is The New Black Season 2 just released on Netflix, it inspired me to peel myself away from the excellent Watch_Dogs, and dive back into Introvision’s wonderful Prison Architect. For those of you that have yet to discover this gem of a game, Prison Architect is a Prison Management Sim, where you can build and run your own correctional facility. Prison Architect is still technically ‘in Alpha’, but it’s still incredibly fun, and horribly addictive!
The Alpha nature of the development means that each month you get a bunch of new features added into the game (see the video above), making it even more fun! This month however, they are doing a major bug sweep, and fixing all the annoying little errors that have cropped up during the development. With this in mind, I thought now would be a great time to jot down a few things I’d love to see in future Prison Architect updates (just in case Mark or Chris are looking in) ;) There are a few things we know are likely to be added at some point in the future (death row, lawyers are 2 that come to mind), but here’s a few things I’d really like to see:
1. Prison Gangs
This is the most obvious one. At the moment there’s no real affiliation between prisoner. I’d like to see them form off into their own little groups. This could mean you need to keep them separate. Maybe the security chief needs to give you a report on which gangs have ‘beef’ with each other. Could be that certain gangs can get favours from guards… Which brings me to…
2. Corruption
We all know (from watching movies) that some of the guards are on the take. You might have a guard who’s helping out a prisoner, and you have work out which one it is. You could question your staff and see what answers they give. Do you believe them? Maybe they’ve been forced to do it cause a gang has something on them, or has kidnapped a family member. If you catch them, the guard could end up in your prison! That might not make the other prisoners happy, which could lead to…
3. Putting out ‘hits’
You got gangs that don’t like each other, or someone snitches on another inmate… Why not let them put a ‘hit’ on another inmate, or even a guard! The security chief has to investigate, or if the hit is successful, you have to bring in an outside police to look into the murder. You could have CSI’s turn up and sweep the crime scene. :D
4. Commissary
A new possible money making option. Let the prisoners buy certain products from a commissary. Could give you more profit, depending on the mark up you add to the products. It could also sell things an ingenious inmate might use for nefarious purposes, such as turning razor blades, a toothbrush and a lighter into a nasty shank.
5. Prison Breaks
At the moment, it’s pretty easy to stop prisoners from escaping. If you fence off the whole area, and run dog patrols to sniff out tunnels, it’s hard for prisoners to get out… But what if they had outside help? You could have a car pull up to snip a hole in the fence and pick the inmate up. Or a helicopter fly in and land in the yard to whisk the prisoner away! This could be countered by building better walls, or having armed guards in towers.
Are you a Prison Architect fan? What would you like to see in a future release? Let us know in the comments!