November 1st, 2012 | By Alex Wilkinson
Tagged in: introversion | PC Game | prison architect | RTS | strategy
It is that time again and no I am not referring to the ever more wintry weather with an ever more distinctive chill to the wind – although it’s a problem. I am of course talking about the much more exciting new alpha release from Introversion for their new game Prison Architect.
Prison Architect is an RTS prison sandbox. You take on the responsibility of becoming a prison architect and designing every aspect of your prison. There is going to be a fully fledged campaign mode along with a sandbox version that will just allow you to go nuts in this very open and ever evolving game.
Introversion stated they wanted to connect to the public and really bring out frequent alpha updates. So far they have been doing this fantastically as the last patch brought in elements that the testers voted for. Last time it was guard assignment to rooms and patrols. This time it is CCTV and fog of war.
I really love the fog of war dynamic that Chris Delay has implemented. He talked about it at Eurogamer Expo and now he has implemented it. The fog of war works by receding once you no longer have guards in an area of the prison. It may not sound like a big deal but it can really change the dynamic of the game completely and forces you to keep patrol routes going.
The shading for the fog of war is very nice adding a great new look to the game and is very much in keeping with the CCTV idea. There will be certain areas in your prison where having guards patrolling is pointless, but you still want to keep an eye on said areas. Very much like in real life CCTV will provide a very limited sweep of an area but hey in places like the morgue you don’t really need guards patrolling -Unless you believe the rumours about zombies.
It would be great to see prisoners start Solid Snaking or Sam Fishering around these fixed points and I am sure this will come in, in due time. Prison Architect has just moved into the third stage of alpha with this patch which is great. There has as always been obligatory bug fixes and minor tweaks done alongside the more interesting stuff.
Along with this there is now a form that will allow anyone who has purchased the “Name In The Game” tier to develop their own bio as much as they would like.
Follow all the latest developments on the official site here. Along with buying access if you have not yet at a price point to suit you.
Alex Wilkinson (542 posts)
Full time gamer part time writer and a Graduate of King College London I have been playing computer games ever since the days of the much loved Amiga. Playing a broad spectrum of games over as many platforms as possible with a distinct obsession with RTS games even though lacking in much of the micro ability. Tweet me @alexwilkinson