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6 months ago
Paradox buy Prison Architect, might make their own Architect games
Paradox Interactive have bought Prison Architect off creators Introversion Software, nabbing the rights and assets while muttering about potentially making new 'Architect' games of their own. Introversion say that after over eight years of development, "we've taken Prison Architect just about as far as we can" and they're doing something new. If Paradox, the publishers behind strategy games and build 'em ups from Crusader Kings…
Prison Architect has a little present for everyone before Introversion Software go into holiday lockdown. First debuted in September as a special opt-in build, the carceral management sim's online multiplayer mode is now polished enough to be included in the game proper. Online mode is still considered 'alpha' and has some limitations, but they've otherwise got the core of the tiny-person punishment game working online. Probably…
10 months ago
Prison Architect adds online multiplayer as an opt-in alpha feature
As grim as its subject matter may be, Introversion's carceral management sim Prison Architect has carved out an oddly social niche as a game to play while streaming and chatting with friends. Today, those building brutalist monuments to man's inhumanity to man can finally share the experience with chums, thanks to a public alpha test for multiplayer. Expect bugs and a few features locked away, but…
12 months ago
Feature: Mayors, tycoons, farmers, wardens, despots and demons
Base-building is de rigueur these days, what with all those survival games, Minecraft, Fallout 4 and now Fortnite, but before all that we had tiny top-down or isometric worlds in which we diligently built cities and dungeons and theme parks and rail networks. The central appeal of management games was and is that they give us an idealised sense of what it is like to…
Look, y'all know me. I'm your friend Brock. I love anything having to do with a cult. Hell, I went out and found my own, once. And this week, I talked about cults and games YET AGAIN. So, I was a little surprised when an indie cult game snuck under my radar. It is named, pleasantly, Honey, I Joined A Cult. The game looks to…
1 year ago
Feature: More than just Theme Prison
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. Prison Architect delivers all the satisfaction of a traditional Bullfrog-style management game. You place walls, lay pipes and wires, and soon slip into a zen state familiar to anyone who played Theme Park. What makes the game special is the simulation of the game's people, which…
Feature: I'll see you again in 21 years
As you may already have spotted, Theme Hospital joins the legions of 90s PC games being blessed with 21st century spiritual sequels. The Sega-published Two Point Hospital is the first game from Two Point Studios, the new endeavour from Bullfrog and Lionhead alumni Gary Carr and Mark Webley, Their plan, ultimately, is to follow-up Hospital with a clutch of other theme/sim/management games set in the…
The Simpsons, Aardman Animations, Twin Peaks, Prison Architect and, quite naturally, Theme Hospital - these are the major inspirations behind Two Point Hospital, an upcoming sim/management game from some of the folk responsible for Bullfrog's Theme glory years. Two Point Hospital, a combination of management and comedy in a fantasy healthcare centre, is due for release - via publishers Sega - later this year, and…
2 years ago
Feature: Dear Spelunker
A beautiful and novel game suffering from something of an identity crisis, Scanner Sombre [official site] is the latest from Introversion Software, making a play for artfulness after a few years of successfully popularising themselves with Prison Architect. But though Scanner's central conceit - using a laser scanner to 'paint' dot-array colours and shape onto your pitch black, subterranean surroundings - is gloriously atmospheric, it…
3 years ago
The top-down shanking simulator Prison Architect [official site] has received an update that introduces needs for the prison's staff, including the desire to go for a whizz, eat food in the canteen and the need to feel safe while working. The game was supposed to be fully cooked, or at least that's what developers Introversion said in August with their 2.0 "final" update, saying that…
In case you've not picked up on all the hints: Devil Daggers [official site] is my favourite new game of 2016, and I'd say the best-looking game in yonks too. Devil Daggers is Geometry Wars thrown against a satanic altar in a darkened room made of Quake [see me -metaphors ed.]. I do recognise a leaderboard-climbing first-person shooter in skull-filled satanarena is a hard sell…
Cos this stuff comes up in comments most every time I run one of these: these charts depict the top ten best-selling games on Steam as accumulated over the week leading up to Sunday just gone. They are not what are the top ten best-selling games at this moment in time, as seen on the front-page of Steam and which are invariably a little different.…
Cell-building sim Prison Architect [official site] has received its last update and the creators are taking a break before they come back to work on their next game, cave explorer Scanner Sombre. They’ll still be doing the odd patch and providing bug support, they say, but this is the last batch of content to be added, resulting in version 2.0. And it’s a bit of…
Prison Architect [official site] technically left early access ten months ago but developers Introversion Software have kept updating their build-o-management game as before. Now they're finally almost done. After the upcoming release of version 2.0, Introversion plan to call it a day and - aside from fixing bugs which pop up - focus on new things like their pretty cave-scanning game. V2.0 will properly launch…
Feature: The Final Picks
We're coming to the end of the Summer Steam Sale so chances are you've picked up the things you'd already got your eye on, but there are always games that sneak under the radar or come from genres you might usually ignore. That's why we've put together our final recommendation list. Here's a whole list of things we love and why we think they're worth…
Prison Architect has been adding extra dimensions to its simulation of prisons for years now, but this is a big one: it now has a 3D mode. The option is semi-hidden but can be activated by a small 'TT' button in the bottom left of the game's "Extras" menu. It doesn't require any mods, but it will convert your existing 2D prison into a three-dimensional…
4 years ago
Prison Architect [official site] emerged from its long stint in Early Access earlier this year and recently clinched the Best Management Game accolade in RPS's Advent Calendar 2015. Now it has, finally, added female prisons. Luckily, there's more to it than simple sprite swapping, as Introversion's Chris Delay and Mark Morris detail in the accompanying video featured below.
Feature: The best management game of 2015.
What is the best management game of 2015? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games from throughout the year, and behind today's door is ... Prison Architect!
As far as Early Access games go, Prison Architect [official site] is one which did it right. Over three and a bit years, developers Introversion Software have added, tweaked, and tuned, and now it looks and plays now so very different. It may have left Early Access and formally launched in October, but Introversion are still fiddling away and yesterday released the first post-release update…
Feature:
I never intended for that picture to become the official header for What Are You/We All Playing This Weekend, you know. I found myself in charge of this section one week and thought I'd find a nice picture of a pond - which was where I intended to mostly spend my weekend. Finding nothing in antique illustration archives (we have our whole antiquated Britishness schtick,…
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