There is nothing but darkness surrounding you. You raise your scanner and paint droplets of iridescent light that cling to the walls, guiding your way towards the surface and, you hope, home. This is Scanner Sombre and it’s this week’s Indie Pick.
From Introversion Software, the makers of Prison Architect, comes Scanner Sombre, a game involving navigating an underground cave using a LIDAR (light detection and ranging) scanner. It looks really neat, and it’s out on April 26 on Steam, GOG and Humble.
The developers of Prison Architect found themselves in a pinch of legal trouble recently when they were contacted by the British Red Cross over the game’s use of a red cross on a white background to denote health. While that may seem harmless, turns out it’s not allowed.
Introversion updated their somewhat controversial resource management sim, Prison Architect, last night, after saying the August 2016 2.0 update would be final. The new update adds a gameplay option for the prison staff to have their own set of needs, requiring them to eat, take breaks, and have time for recreation.
Prison Architect is a top-down prison management game that’s got some visual flair, but it’s definitely 2D. Tiny two-dimensional prisoners wander two-dimensional corridors, dreaming of two-dimensional freedom. Turns out, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Prison Architect, the very good prison building and management sim, will be out on Xbox 360, Xbox One and PS4 in spring. Priced at 30$, the console versions will add a Prison Warden mode where you manage pre-built prisons, and the World of Wardens network, used for sharing custom maps.
People are interested in Introversion’s very good sim Prison Architect because it tries to model the complexities of life inside a penal institution. People also seem to be tougher on Prison Architect than they are on more frivolous games, for the very same reason: it attempts to simulate the complexities of prison…
Almost a decade ago, a majority of the Republicans in Congress voted to pass a prison reform bill called the Second Chance Act, and a Republican president signed it—during an election year, no less. As a policy matter, the bill was modest, less than $100 million a year for things like job training, mental health and…
Prison Architect just broke out of Early Access. The long-in-development prison management game is finally “done”—or at least out of alpha testing. Inspired by the likes of Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress, it’s full of chaotic possibilities. If you’re new, there’s now a campaign story mode.
The developers of Prison Architect have read our guest writer Paolo Pedercini's tough critique of their game. They... liked it! And they've recorded a video addressing Pedercini's concerns about how their game does or doesn't bleed the reality of the real prison system into the game.
Is it possible to create a prison management game without trivializing or misrepresenting the issue of mass incarceration? As video games mature and tackle more serious topics, players and developers should be aware of the values embedded in their systems.
Prison Architect continues to have the best alpha updates: "Alpha 11 brings a host of new features, bug fixes and improvements, not least of which is hearses to take away the unfortunately deceased." Details here. Reasons to play it here. (Warning: Presumably-NSFW cursing at the start of the video.)
The somewhat-wonderful, somewhat-demented interactive incarceration simulator Prison Architect always gets the best updates.
I'm already on-record about how fascinating Prison Architect is. Seriously, it's SimPrison—or ThemePrison, if you will—made by people who seem to be damn near fearless about making video games about uncomfortable topics.
The most interesting decision a video game has given me the opportunity to make this year involved the interior decoration of a prison. The choice, which I was presented just yesterday: Did I want to put a window in the cell of a man on death row? Or save the money? Either way, he was going to die the next day.
Proven countless times over the past several years alone, video games are a form of entertainment uniquely suited to communicating serious subjects in an interactive fashion — far more effectively than reading a book or watching a documentary. Unfortunately Apple wants nothing to do with that sort of communication, so…
