Greetings, wardens!

Following our Anniversary celebration post, you sent us many prisons - but how do they live up to a real prison?

We are finally happy to announce our special guest for the celebratory stream: Larry Lawton, a Prison Expert and Law Enforcement Consultant, will join us on October 29 on the Paradox Interactive Twitch Channel. During this stream, we will be reviewing the best prisons we received - and he will share his insights and tips on them!

We look forward to seeing you all there!
The Prison Architect Team

Greetings, Wardens!

Today, we are celebrating Prison Architect’s fifth Anniversary!

When we noticed that this impressive milestone was coming, we started talking about what we could do to honor the legacy of the game’s roots. We have been talking for a while now about allowing the fans of this game’s history to continue enjoying the great work done by Introversion, and so we decided that no time would be better than this special occasion.

So, starting from today, we are celebrating this incredible milestone for the Prison Architect Community - going strong for more than 5 years is quite an achievement - by re-releasing 2 special versions of Prison Architect to the public:

• Prison Architect Anniversary - 2015 version
• This edition is the original release edition.
• Prison Architect Anniversary - 2018 version
• The latest edition released by Introversion.

These releases are exactly as they were back in the days - no changes were or will be made. On top of that, the guys at Introversion also very kindly offered to turn the multiplayer servers back on for the 2018 Version - so you will be able to re-live the original experience in its entirety!

The Prison Architect Anniversary Editions will be available for all the owners of the game. Additionally, we don’t have plans to remove them - they are here to stay.

How to install the Anniversary Editions:
Prison Architect Anniversary - 2015 version

1. Go to Steam and right-click on “Prison Architect” in your library
   
2. Go to Properties and select the tab “Betas”
   
   
3. Click the drop down list and select “Prison Architect Anniversary - 2015 version”
   
   
4. Once it is downloaded, launch the game
   
5. Select the fourth option “Play Prison Architect Anniversary - 2015 version” in the pop-up window
   

Prison Architect Anniversary - 2018 version

1. Go to Steam and right click on “Prison Architect” in your library
   
2. Go to Properties and select the tab “Betas”
   
   
3. Click the drop down list and select “Prison Architect Anniversary - 2018 version”
   
   
4. Once it is downloaded, launch the game
   
5. Select the fourth option “Play Prison Architect Anniversary - 2018 version” in the pop-up window
   

Greetings, Wardens!

Today marks five years since the release of Prison Architect!



To celebrate such a milestone for our community, we asked a special guest to join us for this occasion - we will reveal their identity soon!

For more than five years, the Prison Architect Community has shown incredible creativity and our prisons have become better in organization and efficiency… But how do they hold under the scrutiny of an expert eye?

We will host a special stream on October 27, judging and evaluating the prisons sent by YOU! Are you particularly proud of one prison? Do you want to see if your work holds when scrutinized by an expert eye? This is your chance!

You can send us your Prisons via Google form.

You can send us your prisons until October 17th. We will then make a selection and ask our guest to judge them on a special stream on the Paradox Interactive channel.

Hello wardens,

We have just deployed a new patch addressing some of the issues that were reported by the community.
Thank you for all your feedback. We are grateful for our extremely passionate community!

The Prison Architect Team

Changelog:

• Added a tooltip to explain why some construction work is blocked.
  
• The Island Generator will no longer charge the player when only water is generated.
  
• We have improved janitors and the cleaning systems.
  
• We have improved the laundry system.
  
• Fixed an issue were the prisoner swapped places with a visitor when using the visitor booths.
  
• Fixed an issue with laundry machine not working correctly when dirty clothes are added.
  
• Fixed an issue where punching bag could cause the game to crash.
  
• Fixed the clipping issues in Escape mode.
  
• Fixed various issues causing the game to crash.

Known Issues:

• [Escape Mode] Players getting stuck in a corner of the map when starting a new game on a map that does not meet the minimum requirements (one empty cell + canteen).

Welcome to Show and Cell, our little corner to showcase the creativity of the Prison Architect community! Here you can find some inspiration and read about the people that create fan art, gameplay videos, or building some awesome prisons!

If you want to take part in the next Show and Cell, tag us on twitter (@prisonarchitect) and use the hashtag #showandcell! You can send us a DM as well if you prefer to do so!

If you want to get the latest news and updates, you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.



In this episode of Show and Cell, we take a peek into Minisville Penitentiary, created by Sensational TKO. Have you ever heard about tiny living? At Minisville, he took that philosophy and built a prison with just the most essentials and as small as possible!

"There's no room for solitary inside the main building. So naughty cons have to stay outside in the cold." - The Warden.



We had the opportunity to ask Sensational TKO a few questions.

How long did it take to create Minisville Penitentiary?
It didn't take very long to build Minisville Penitentiary. But as always, things had to be adjusted a bit due to realising that there were some things I hadn't planned on adding when I planned it out.

What was your goal when you started creating Minisville Penitentiary?
The goal was to create the smallest working prison I could, while still making it look and work ok.

How did you come up with the name?
Most of my prison names kinda end up with a '-ville' at the end. And it's a mini prison. So Minisville.

Anything you want to mention about the prison?
It is not very secure - it would be very easy to escape from it in escape mode as it only has five guards. Any more than that would be overkill for the small number of prisoners. Although it might be possible to research smaller cells to cram in two prisoners into each cell?

Did you plan the layout of the prison before you built it?
Yes. I always plan everything out first. This does kinda make things less enjoyable. Now I got into the habit of it, and it's hard to stop.

How long have you been playing Prison Architect?
I've been playing Prison Architect for many years. It's one of my top three games.

What made you start playing Prison Architect?
I like sim games. And Prison Architect not only has a simple concept behind it but unlike a lot of building games, there is more to it than just building things. This means that even when you have finished building, there is an actual point to keep playing. Escape mode also adds to this (although I feel it should be harder).

Any tips for someone new to the game how to get better on planning and building their prison?
I would say always build around open spaces. Use windows. Try to limit the area where prisoners are allowed to go as much as possible. And think about the placement of rooms like the canteen (it is always better to have it near the yard so you can have prisoners move from yard time to eat time quickly, so no one starves because they didn't have time to get to the canteen), and visitation (don't have visitors mingling with prisoners in corridors).

Also, use guard deployment to station guards in areas at different times of the day. You can then get away with having fewer guards. Try not to play the game at a fast speed as you miss a lot of what is going on. And check each prisoner that comes into your prison. You need to know who is who, how dangerous they are, and where they are likely to be in your prison during the day. Finally, try to make your max block more secure, don't just have them mixing with lower sec inmates or working in areas where they can get knives and power tools.

Do you want to try this prison? Then you can get it here!
Minisville Penitentiary

Thank you for this time, and see you for the next Show and Cell!
The Prison Architect Team

Hello, Wardens!

We just deployed a new update addressing several reports we saw reported from players and modders.

Thank you for all your feedback. We are grateful for our extremely passionate community!
The Prison Architect Team

Changelog:

• Reduced the Prisoners’ clothing and Hygiene needs.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused supply items to come by batches of one.
  
• Planned Objects and Flooring now work outside of Planned Foundation.
  
• Cloning a room will no longer double object cost.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the Prison Story “Gabos” to start with missing prisoners.
  
• Solved a Mod functionality positioning issue.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused occasional crashes when loading a modded save file.

Hello Wardens,

We just published a new update for the PC, Mac, and Linux version of Prison Architect containing more fixes to issues and bugs you reported, overall improvements based on both players’ and internal feedback… and some cool new features for Island Bound!

First of all, we are happy to announce that the new Island Generation tool is now available! This tool will allow you to draw a box on open water, and it will randomly generate a new Island in the selected area.



We’ve also spent some time implementing several community suggestions to other core areas of the Prison Architect game experience.

We hope you enjoy the new features and fixes to Island Bound and other legacy issues, and we’ll continue as always to monitor your feedback and suggestions.

The Prison Architect Team

Changelog:

• NEW FEATURE - Island Generator: Players can use this tool to create a random island in the selected area.
  
  • You can find this new tool in the “Landscape & Islands” menu.
• NEW FEATURE - Expanded Map start option: On new games, you can choose to start with an already expanded map, with all the adjacent land or sea purchased.
  
• Added newer, improved versions of the Premade The Rock and Alcatraz Island maps.

Implemented suggestions from the Prison Architect Community:

• Elite Ops Team is not included in Danger Level factors.
  
• Guard dogs are invisible whilst in kennels.
  
• During lockdowns, doors cannot be opened manually.
  
• Each checkpoint search counts as an unnecessary search, which can increase a prison temperature.
  
  • Checkpoints can now be placed outdoors as well.
• Criminally Insane inmates will no longer arrive in your prison while Intake is set to closed.
  
• Improved efficiency of deliveries for the Forestry
  
• The player prisoner in Escape Mode can now board ferries with a new contextual right-click action that appears when standing near or on the ferry boat.
  
• Implemented quality of life changes to services and deliveries connections
  
• The Food supply system and food delivery have been improved.

Implemented fixes to issues reported by the Prison Architect Community:

• Fixed an issue that occasionally prevented Laundries from working correctly.
  
• Checkpoints will no longer cause issues with prisoner pathing.
  
• Fixed an issue where Fill to Capacity Intake was closed despite players having spare cells.
  
• Enclosed Yards will no longer cause warnings about the need to be enclosed.
  
• The game will no longer pause while building foundations on Mac.
  
• Snipers will now be correctly assigned when moving Guard Towers.
  
• Guard deployments to Pavilions are now saved.
  
• Players will be now able to complete the Canteen sprinkler task in the Palermo Chapter of the Campaign.
  
• Purchasing additional land no longer causes a performance drop.
  
• Solved an issue that caused prisoner corpses to accumulate in one corner of the map after an Intake round.
  
• The Fast Delivery Mutator is now working properly.
  
• Food is now delivered to prisoners in Solitary or Lockdown.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the game to display pathing fail notifications during big constructions.
  
• Implemented a change to visitation booths to address the reports of prisoners and visitors swapping.
  
  • If you are experiencing this bug, you can remove and replace the booths in your prison - this will fix the issue.

Other Improvements:

• Implemented improvements to the overall intake system and events, and a couple of fixes to related issues.
  
• Generated Islands look more varied and interesting on Island Bound.

Hello wardens!

As mentioned last week, we are currently working on a new patch for Prison Architect to address several issues we saw reported, implement the new Island Creation tool, and do some bug fixing.

We were initially planning to release the patch this week - but we assessed we need a bit more time to work on it to make sure it lives up to your expectations. We are currently looking at releasing it on Tuesday or Wednesday next week.

Thank you all for your feedback and all the reports, rest assured that we are listening!
The Prison Architect Team

TL;DR: New patch coming next week!

Hello Wardens,

We’re back with another update this week with more investigation into reported issues, fixes and improvements. They’ll be more next week too but we wanted to get the latest out to you. In addition to fixes, last week we rolled out a new Island Expansion feature, which has been improved further. When playing with an island and expanding the land, the islands generated in the water are more varied, and players now have the option to generate these islands, or just water, if they wish.




We’re also working on a tool for you to quickly generate random islands in the location of your choice.

Thank you for all your feedback.
The Prison Architect Team

Changelog:

• New feature: When expanding a Island map, a pop-up will give the choice to have only water or generated Islands.
  
• Staff will again respond to player directions now.
  
• Solved issue with Forestry Prisoner Labour assignments not being saved.
  
• Fixed so you can assign a cell to a prisoner by selecting the prisoner and right-clicking on an empty cell.
  
• Fixed the Spiritual guidance and Parole programs not occurring after the first day of implementation.
  
• Fixed the issue with the eating animations.
  
• Fixed that the Health Bureaucracy text mentions guards instead of Doctors.
  
• Fixed the issue with janitors using the ironing boards from a distance.
  
• The Chefs now cooks more meals in the kitchen. (We are still investigating the supply issue).
  
• Solved the issue with Firefighter’s truck riding on the water after dismissing a helicopter on Island Plot map.
  
• Fixed the issue with Capacitor and Power Switch not conducting electricity after changing their rotation without moving them.
  
• Fixed the issue with missing french localization strings.
  
• Solved the issue where warden can go beyond the map in Warden mode.
  
• Improving the generated islands when expanding the map to look more natural and varied. (We will improve this even further in the coming week)
  
• Solved the issue with Sedation sometimes didn't work.
  
• The Laundry and Janitor cleaning jobs have been changed to make them more effective.

We are also investigating the following issues as a priority for next week’s update

• New Feature [In Progress] - Island ‘Quick Builds’ to stamp down various island shapes in open water.
  
• New Feature [In Progress] - “Island generator”, similar to a building construction that will generate an island where you want it to.
  
• Improvements - Some jobs are being reworked to improve their efficiency and general stability of the game.
  
• Performance - A round of optimisation and performance testing.

Hello Wardens!

We just published a new hotfix for the Mac and Linux, as mentioned last week, to address several issues that you reported. We are still looking into solving more, and you can find the changelog here.

Thank you all for your feedback!
The Prison Architect Team