Rating: 8/10
Overview:
An RTS resource management and building game, where you must build the best prison you can to hold the worlds worst criminals
My Views
A great RTS with an interesting premise, imagine theme hospital but for prisons, where you must care for, feed, entertain, put to work, reform and ultimately incarcerate prisoners of different danger levels. The game runs smooth and has no major faults but sometimes can feel a little unfair.
Gameplay
The standard isometric view where you must build a prison from the ground up, starting small where you basically build a glorified jail and enhance it all the way up to a maximum security institution. It builds gradually and you can completely control the speed at which the game progresses by controlling the intake speed of prisoners, these prisoners can then be put into different cells from single cells up to dormitories but each come with there own pros and cons. For instance single cells will allow prisoners alone time and to be protected from there fellow inmates but can cause them to become lonely and can even give them an opportunity to dig out without being seen.
This is where the game can feel unfair however because there is little to no indication as to when and how these escapes are going to take place. When building my prison I put metal detectors over the doors leading to the cells and three different prisoners in three different cells escaped that night by digging a tunnel, how? just how?
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Another thing that can be a little off with the game is that sometimes the prisoners don't try to escape when there is a clear path out of the prison, like when you are building an extension and there is a definite opening.
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You will find yourself trying to balance inmate intake, space, money, staff and prisoners needs in order to make your prison run smoothly and this never feels to difficult as there are a number of loans and grants you can take to raise money quickly and all you have to do is meet a few simple criteria in order to get your large cash rewards
The campaign
This is a short 5 mission campaign which is basically just used as an overly long tutorial, teaching you most of the basic management and building skills you will need to be able to build your own prison in free roam, but not all of the games intricacies are covered, although most are. The last few things you will be able to pick up easily enough when you finally get to building your own prison.
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After learning the very basics in the first few missions, the campaign takes a turning point at about mission three where you are tasked with stopping a riot and diffusing a hostage situation. The game stops being a resource manager game here and becomes a squad based RTS which is a refreshing turn in the gameplay. You must take control of riot police, medics and firemen in order to bring the prisoners back under control and put out any fires that occur within the prison and it is great, it reminds me of
a good command and conquer or StarCraft level.
Once you bring order back you can then stay on the level and help rebuild the prison. I found this so enjoyable that sometimes I would purposely make my prison riot just so I could take part in these sections.
The Look
Is a simplistic one but it allowed the developers the chance to really work on the game play aspect and make a surprisingly complicated game. Ever inmate and staff member is composed of a oblong shaped body and a head and that's it, they just bob about the place and its infatuating to watch, they all almost have character. I mean they don't but you can't help feel that they do. all the other aspects of the graphics match this style and personally I think it looks great and by keeping it this cute and cuddly
look it helps to prevent the game from being to serious even when sometimes these little webble wobbles get stabbed by there companions and blood starts pouring out of them.
My last thoughts
I love these types of games and I couldn't stop trying to build a better prison, I lost many days and night s to this relatively simple and short game. The game never bogs you down in to many menus or complicated micromanagement stuff. It is however a little on the expensive side at the moment and if you do not absolutely love this management style of games then you may want to wait for the price to come down slightly but if you do enjoy these types of games then just go for it, it is worth it honestly.
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Until next time... Toby