Prison Architect
Prison Architect reminds me of the slew of building and management games that came out in the ‘90s that had all sorts of wacky concepts that went beyond building a city or a theme park. Some (Theme Hospital, Dungeon Keeper, Zoo Tycoon) were excellent games, while others (Lemonade Tycoon, SimSafari, Fast Food Tycoon 2) fell flat. Prison Architect reminds me of the first set of games. It has engaging gameplay, a bunch of design options and a ton of intricate management options on top of the intruiging concept of building a prison. There have been games that have tried the concept before but none of were very good. Prison Architect on the other hand is one of the very best building games of the past decade.
On top of the quality of the game, special kudos should be given to Introversion for one of the most successful implementations of Steam’s Early Access model that i’ve ever seen. While many games have either rotted on the vine or failed to live up to expectations, the team behind Prison Architect released 36 alpha updates to the game over the span of three years before the game was released in full in October 2015. I bought the game in a Humble Bundle in September of 2014, but didn’t give it a go until this month, and I’ve more or less played it non-stop. Highly recommended for fans of building games.- Ryan
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