Prison Architect: Nintendo Switch Edition

Genre: Management Sim

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Prison Architect is a Management Sim where players control the building and management of a prison facility, controlling everything from the building layout to the staff and rehabilitation programs, and even the specifics of the day-to-day schedule.

The Nintendo Switch version of the game has multiple DLC add-ons included with the base game. You have a campaign mode, Prison Stories, that acts as a very lengthy tutorial, as well as the main Prison Architect mode that lets you build your facility from the ground up with multiple variable starting factors, a Prison Warden mode that has you taking control of one of thirty pre-made prisons (most of them fake, but there are a few real ones, like Alcatraz), “World of Wardens”, where players can publish and download each others’ prisons. Also, via paid DLC there’s the Escape Mode, that places players in the role of a prisoner trying to escape one of these prisons.

As these sorts of simulation games go, this one gets a lot of things right. It’s fairly impressive the level of detail that’s present here. Players will have to keep an eye on their prison population’s needs, ensure that security is sufficient, and make sure the budget works, all via multiple game systems that are pretty intricately connected. There is a wealth of options of different things for players to build, electrical and plumbing systems to keep in mind, a skill tree of bureaucratic unlockables to work through, and multiple factors to consider. Fans of Sim City and Theme Hospital-style sims looking for that style of game will find a lot to love here.

In addition, there’s also the unexpectedly heavy M-rated story in the campaign mode (which, frustratingly, has a somewhat anticlimactic ending), and some really good use of sound that does a great job of mirroring a busy cafeteria or an escalating riot, and it’s really cool to see workers scurrying about to build the prison, rather than having it magically pop up when you make a selection. Having said that, the graphical style depicting the characters themselves is underwhelming, with characters looking simple and generic like they were all copy-pasted out of a two-minute MS Paint doodle. These simplistic characters really detract from the serious themes the game otherwise has, and clash with the fairly high level of detail the rest of the game has

There are some issues with the gameplay as well that keep this from being a truly great entry in the genre. Prisons naturally require some specific facilities in order to operate – a prison must have an outer wall with a gate, a front office, a holding cell for new inmates, a cafeteria, a kitchen, individual cells for inmates, showers… there’s a whole checklist of things that you need to make in order to have a prison that even resembles something functioning, and this really cuts into the feeling that you’re making something that’s your own creative choice.

To add on to that, each one of these rooms requires a multi-step process to build everything that particular room needs to function, which would be tedious if there weren’t already pre-made rooms you can quickly slap into your prison… but this, also, makes it feel less like you’re making your own thing. You don’t have to use them, but choosing to build these rooms from scratch is something you’ll be loath to do, especially for rooms like the prison cells themselves, which you’ll be making potentially hundreds of times over.

And while I like that the game shows workers actually building a room, sometimes it’s inexplicable what’s taking them so long, and the areas you’ve marked for construction often don’t feel as if they’re as clearly-marked as I’d like, leading me to attempt to build on the same area multiple times.

Also, while this game gives you a wealth of options, it often isn’t as clear as it should be when providing you information. For example, it took me a lot of fiddling around to realize that the power station I was trying to build couldn’t be built over water pipes, can’t be connected to an already-existing power grid, and the previous power station I had wasn’t turning on after I halved the demand from it because it needed to be manually reset.

Also, forget about the Escape Mode. It’s clunky and characters move slow as molasses, and it’s basically trying to do the same thing that The Escapists series does far better already. Oh, and the Nintendo Switch version doesn’t support the touchscreen in portable mode. Boo.

While not without its flaws, Prison Architect is still a solid entry in the genre that provides a lot of depth for those looking for a straight-up Management Sim. While there’s definitely a lot of room for improvement here, fans of the genre will find that this game definitely scratches that itch, and is well worth getting on the Switch.

tl;dr – Prison Architect is a Management Sim in the vein of Sim City and Theme Hospital where players build and manage the inner-workings of a prison. There are a lot of options and intricate systems to play with here, and although there are definitely multiple places that the game could be improved on, in the end fans of the genre should be pretty happy with this one.

Grade: B

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