Prison Tycoon - Gameplay

Gameplay

The premise of the game is to create a functional prison complete with walls, guard towers, housing wings, dining, workout and medical facilities. The objective of the game is ultimately to turn your low security incarceration facility into a profitable maximum security prison. Funding is collected by the player through state funding, charitable donations and inmate labor depending on a myriad of factors, such as employee satisfaction and inmate happiness and rehabilitation. You have the option to start with a completely blank slate in a free-play mode or with the basic layout of an existing prison with several problems that need to be addressed in the challenge mode.

The challenges range from rehabilitating a certain number of inmates, reducing the number of riots and fights within the prison or simply to reaching a certain level of security. To create a prison the player places buildings or walls along a grid system by selecting which building they would like and placing it somewhere within the boundaries of the map. There are over 100 different buildings that can be constructed. Within certain buildings the player can build different rooms from over 100 to choose from, such as rooms with multiple beds within one cell or solitary confinement cells. Buildings come with their appropriate staffing, for example guard towers come with guards already positioned in the tower and medical facilities come with medical staffing.

Once a player has constructed sufficient housing and basic amenities, prisoners begin arriving on buses depending on the capacity of the prison. Prisoners continue to arrive as long as there is sufficient capacity to hold them and depart as they complete their sentences. As the number of inmates increases the prison upgrades to a higher security level, beginning at low security until it becomes a maximum security prison. With higher levels of security the player has access to more advanced facilities and upgraded walls and guard towers.

Players are able to click on both inmates and staff to get a basic description of their levels of satisfaction, fatigue, productivity, as well as misconduct for prisoners. Players are also able to assign prisoners to cells, jobs and activities by clicking on one of these things with the prisoner selected. Also, players can drag and drop guards to areas of high misconduct or to break up riots which occur within the prison if prisoners become too dissatisfied.