I started off with the tutorial story mode. It was a good way to learn the basics of the game but I did not like the inefficient designs of those prisons. The last tutorial level allowed me to start from scratch and build however I wanted, so I set out to build the best prison. I only started off with a delivery, garbage and storage. Near the end I moved the garbage and storage to the narrow strip on the other side of the road. I started with reception attached to delivery with double staff doors; I probably could have made the room smaller and definitely did not need to continue the double doors leading to a 2 space hallway. The hallway was split by double jail doors and metal detectors, with the outer part being set visitors only. North of the visitor hallway was the staff room, which lead to the management offices. South of the hall was a security room leading to the armory. Outside the prison I made a utility room with water pump and power plant. 1 plant was not enough to power a full prison so I had to fiddle around with setting up an entirely separate power grid because the 2 plants could not be linked in any way, including their capacitors touching. Also outside was the kennel. Back inside past the safe outside zone was the shared hallway. Along the south was the visitation room, which I later expanded with a wall of booths separating the low sec area from max sec. There was not enough room to fit the last booth so I took out the wall to the next door class room, using the edge of the booth itself as the wall; it worked but is probably the weakest link to the max sec area. The classroom leads to a small parole office. The rest of the south section was open space workshop, mailroom and laundry for the prisoners to work. I later had to expand the mailroom into the hallway to fit a couple more work stations to deal with all the mail cluttering up my delivery. I noticed very early that people could move through objects so I did not have to worry about cramming stuff in, except that certain work stations had to be unlocked (like workshop and sink). I changed the punishment scheme once the option became available and was appalled at how light the punishment were. Mine were: possessing luxuries got a cell search (because I could never have too many of those), while ever other offense got both cell and person searched. 24hs lockdown for destroying or stealing property, 48hrs for escape attempt. 8hrs in solitary for attacking prisoners, 24hrs for attacking staff, 48hrs for causing serious injury. 12hrs lockdown for being intoxicated. 7 days solitary for killing someone (the max possible but I usually manually changed it to permanent solitary). 7 days lockdown for possessing weapons, 24hrs for tools or drugs, 72hrs for producing narcotics.
Along the north area of the hallway was the holding cell, infirmary and kitchen. I later put some beds in the cell when I had an accidental overflow of prisoners, but I think it is a good idea to keep some low sec prisoners there for more profit. Double jail doors with metal detectors lead outside to the prisoner area proper, while a staff door with metal detector goes into the kitchen. This was because the kitchen had 2 staff doors into the canteen, which opened into the cell blocks with a metal detector. I thought about putting a remote door to the kitchen just to block access to that route in case of riot, but it was never needed. The double doors open to the massive yard outside. The map had a large green area in the middle and I wanted it to be the courtyard in the middle of the prison. For most of the early game there was only chain link fence separating the prisoners from escaping. Later I built walls with a narrow staff only walkway around the south and east sides of the yard, with armed guards there to shoot through the fence at no risk to themselves. The top 2/3 of the yard was for the min and med sec population, and I filled it with weights, mats, punching bags, phones, a boombox and some chess tables. Never seen anyone actually play chess though. The bottom 1/3 was for max sec and had similar amenities. Separating the 2 yards was that narrow walkway with armed guards. I also put barbed wire up. Just outside the south west corner I put a sniper tower. I tried putting 1 in the southeast corner as well but I could not find a way to orient it so the sniper could get in, so I moved it across the street outside. I put searchlights and floodlights in the staff area to light the yard. West of the yard to the edge of the map I put a common room with pool tables, tvs and arcade machines, library, chapel and shop, with a metal detector covering the entrance. Just outside the kitchen I put a prefab shower, though later expanded it and found it more efficient to have open space hallway showers with drains under each cell door to prevent flooding. I made 1 hallway just above the common room into cleaning so the prisoners could clean. Despite having a guard there and multiple cameras, the prisoners were constantly being caught with stolen poison from cleaning supplies.
I started out with prefab cells and renovated them to 2x2 after researching small cells. I crammed in solitary confinement wherever I could; the prefab 2 space with a chair was a waste. I even had solitary cells that opened into other solitary cells. The best cells formed the north wall of the yard, because I let them have windows. At first I did not understand how to use security zones to micromanage exactly what class of prisoner could use each cell. I had some min sec only, the entire north prison was med sec only, and the entire south was max sec only, while any place with hallways leading to shared facilities was shared. The max sec area was supposed to be completely cut off from the lower sec area, with its own kitchen, canteen and showers. The entrance to max sec was a security room with barred wall and armed guards, directly across from the sniper tower. Then I put remote doors in an airlock style with the tiny space in between set to staff only so the populations could not mix. I put several other remote doors to the kitchen, canteen and separating a few hallways. However, once I got the idea to separate max sec into supermax and protective custody, I set a lot of the areas to shared. The guards were mixing populations, putting min and med guys in the south, and max guys in the north. I started manually transferring prisoners to the proper cells, but that was incredibly tedious. There had to be a way to designate individual cells for 1 type of prisoner while keeping the hallway outside shared, and I stumbled upon the solution because some areas of my prison were like that. I realized that doors and rooms in halls worked. So the best way to do it was to make the halls into showers, which allowed me to set the shower to shared while each cell was an individual security zone. Or if I was ok setting an entire block the same zone, all it needed was a 1 tile shower. So I got rid of all my stupid shared cells and had a specific number of cells for each prisoner type. This made it much easier to intake new prisoners because all I needed to do was compared the numbers.
I left the min sec regime mostly intact. I gave them an hour breakfast and changed all but the last hour of free time into yard and work. I changed med sec so they would go to bed later to stagger the use of showers and eating. They also had opposite times for yard and work. The only trouble I had was when the med sec guys were starving and there were a lot of fights. It happened while I was building the max sec area. Once I made that kitchen, the cooks were wasting time bringing supplies there even though there was no power, plumbing or prisoners there yet. I removed the room but that was enough to tip the scales of my well oiled machine. I had to give med sec 3 hour meal sessions to make sure everyone got fed, and hire some more cooks. I started putting bookshelves in each cell for med sec and above. The max sec regime was far more restrictive, with 2 hours in the yard and the rest locked up (or locked back up right after shower/food). They were pissed off a lot and caused a lot of trouble; fights and breaking stuff in their cells. While I treated the lower sec guys better for the chance at reform, screw the hardcore criminals. They are lucky to get out of their cells at all. This was why I divided the max sec population into 3 with supermax and protective, though it was challenge to set their regimes to not overlap. I also put in a few death row cells and the execution chamber. I had a couple of escapes early on; 1 I have no idea how it happened but was probably related to the fences rather than walls. The other guy ran through the 1 space of perimeter wall that was not yet complete, after I linked up a new construction area to the rest of the prison after the guards started putting prisoners in those cells. I learned to set new cells to staff only until I was ready to link it to the rest of the prison. I had a lot of deaths from starvation. Many times I would see starving prisoners enter the canteen during meal time, and just sit there not eating. There was food on the serving tables, so what the hell? I also starting having prisoners kill others and staff. Fights in max sec were nearly constant, most often the guy smashing stuff in his cell then being beaten up by the guards. I had to investigate the prisoners involved and check their traits. Snitches, ex law enforcement and instigators I put on permanent lockdown to keep them out of trouble. A couple were extremely volatile and masters of combat, to the point that keeping them alive was more trouble than it was worth so I manually locked them in solitary until they starved to death. Good thing this game has no penalty for deaths in custody! I then played around with death row and did a couple executions. I hated how tedious the execution process was. Like why does the entire prison have to lock down instead of just the areas being used? And more importantly, why can’t I minimize the execution window to do stuff around the prison. It did not even let me scroll around or increase game speed. The second guy was at 89% out of 90% for state approval, so I said screw it an executed him anyway. I was hit with a huge fine, my death row prisoners were taken, I could not get more for a while, and was told if I did that again I would be fire. Why the hell even give the option to execute prematurely then? I was under the impression that I would only be penalized if the guy was found innocent, and the counter said he was not innocent. The last thing I did was cram some luxury cells on the other side of the road, with bookshelves, tvs, windows and showers. Those inmates were on permanent lockdown because the road was not secure. I did put in some road gates but left them open to not delay trucks.
Then I tried out the escape mode demo. It was ok but the game crashed and did not save any progress. I found it finicky to target things, like my bed to go to sleep. I did a bunch of missions for the boss, the first of which was to beat a guy up but he won the fight. Ok, I need skill points in fighting and toughness. I did manage to punch a guy to death just outside the yard, and got off with it. I had both fighting and toughness nearly maxed, a couple points in ninja, 1 in thief and 1 in lockpicking before it crashed. I would go around swiping stuff to sell to the dealer and had a lot of money. The last mission I was on was to smuggle a package from a staff only area. I managed to get through the remote door by following an office worker, and was only a jail door from my target. Then the guards came. I killed 1 and was in a big fight, then it crashed. I also downloaded a free update for the base game and when I loaded up my prison I found I could finally purchase more land. So I did. Then people started digging tunnels and escaping. So I built perimeter walls around the map, put up a couple more sniper towers, and put an armed guard at the north end of the road. So it must be that prisoners cannot dig past walls on the edge of the map. I made a new cell block attached to the max area, and a couple more luxury cells by the road to get my prisoner count to 500. Along the way I was faced with 2 serious problems that resulted in quite a few deaths. The first was the guard operating the max sec door controls left his post twice, causing a ridiculous traffic jam. There was a guard on the CCTV monitor, and plenty of others stuck in the airlock, but none of the bastards would go use the door controls. There were too many people piled on top for me to click on the doors to manually open them, and I could not get any guard to use the control. The first time it happened I managed to manually open the doors after several minutes of trying, but that did not work at all the next time. I had to destroy walls to make an alternate route and manually tell the stuck people to use it while I built another door control in the warden’s office. Good to know those systems don’t actually have to be in security rooms. The third time this happened it was easy to fix by linking more remote doors to the backup control. The other problem I had was invincible prisoners, who were completely immune to damage and tasers from 12+ guards at once for many minutes. A couple guards even died from this, and once I called in a riot squad that did absolutely nothing. Eventually they were all subdued, but retained this bug during future fights, even after reloading. So I locked them in solitary to starve to death. They were not worth the hassle. Prisoners were dying of starvation and injuries from the guards having to deal with this nonsense.
I did a few shakedowns to remove contraband and find escape tunnels; had to look up online how to destroy tunnels. I had to demolish a lot of them. With nearly 300 prisoners in the max sec area after populating the new block, there were a lot more fights. A couple prisoners were assassinated, and my infirmary was feeling a little too small. There was even a huge fight among the med sec that was probably caused by an instigator. I looked at the informant system, but it seems too tedious for too little benefit. A lot of this game could stand to be better automated, especially how I hated manually changing prisoners to supermax and protective, especially when sometimes the menu option would move over 1 selection, making me put that 1 extra press in. I am done playing for now as I do not feel like maxing out the map. I have thought about what to put in the remaining empty space, and it would have to be another mixed min and med sec area with its own kitchen and canteen. It might even need to be an entirely separate prison with its own facilties like laundry, visitation and chapel. Ultimately, I think the fun has worn off and the game has become tedious. It could be interesting to try a new prison from the hardest start, and try mixing all the prisoner types. I looked the other features in the game but nothing is particularly interesting. I see no point in playing pre made prisons, nor in buying dlc. It is a fun game for what it is, but the bugs are annoying. I also have it free on Epic so it might be worth trying it out on PC too.
7.2/10
