Prison Architect left Early Access back in October of last year, but that hasn't stopped Introversion Software from continuing to deliver monthly content updates to the game. And recently, a rather significant new feature has been discovered that was never in the patch notes; a hidden button that renders out your prison and all of its denizens in 3D, allowing you to zoom in and get a rather unique look at what's always been a flat, top-down game.

I reached out to Introversion's lead designer Chris Delay to see what he could tell me about this seemingly new addition to the game, and it turns out it's been in there longer than anyone realized. "We are astonished it took this long for the secret to be found!" Delay said. "3D Mode has been present in the public version of [Prison Architect] since v1.0, so that s October 2015—almost six months. We actually believed it would be discovered in days initially."

But evidently, it took much longer than days. Delay mentioned that the first public post he saw about it was from Steam user Rico on the game's Steam forum late last week. But the post went largely unnoticed, and the feature remained rather hidden, until TheLogical Lowdown posted a video of the feature (embedded above) a couple days later, which then picked up steam on the /r/Games subreddit. 

However, a big question remained; what was the 3D mode for? Delay told me they started working on it during the Alpha as an experimental visualization. "It was basically a massive engine hack that gave a fascinating alternative view on your prison—literally looking at it from a new angle. We never managed to bring it up to a decent quality sufficient to actually say 'This is now an official feature.'" Despite not being happy with how 3D mode was turning out, Introversion decided to secretly put it into the 1.0 release of Prison Architect for players to stumble upon. "We did think it was very cool, hence hiding it as an easter egg for people to discover. Why let such an awesome, albeit completely unfinished feature, go to waste?" 

When we had Delay and Introversion producer Mark Morris on The PC Gamer Show last September, they both expressed their excitement for VR and mentioned that they were already playing around with it, so I thought maybe this 3D mode had roots in making Prison Architect more appealing (or at all usable) in VR—but Delay said that wasn't the case. "Yes we do have a Vive kit and yes we are totally in love with it and VR in general. I don t think the 3D in our secret mode quite stacks up to the quality required for VR, but it would definitely be cool to look down on a wargaming table that had a Prison built on it, all animated and alive." Whether or not that was their intention, it'd be great to see a modder make this new mode work in VR eventually.

Delay also made it clear that 3D mode was nothing to be alarmed by for those who prefer how Prison Architect looks now, saying "we don t see it replacing the main game view. That said, we will probably do some improvements to 3D mode now that it s been discovered." Five months is a long time to wait to update a new feature but, like Delay, I'm pretty amazed it's gone by unnoticed for this long in the first place. 

Early on in my first game of Prison Architect, I found I had to readjust my thinking. I'd been playing the good warden, being as attentive as possible to my growing population of inmates, constantly checking their list of needs to see how I could improve things for them. Were they missing their families? I built payphones, a mailroom, and scheduled time for visitations. Were they looking for ways to improve themselves? I built classrooms, a library, and acquired grant money for alcohol and drug rehab, workshop training, and other life-enhancing programs. I added a second kitchen and cafeteria after noticing some prisoners weren't getting enough time to eat, and I put bookshelves and TV in every cell to ensure they weren't bored. For a while, I treated Prison Architect like any other building and management sim. If I kept everyone happy, surely nothing could really go wrong.

Then five prisoners escaped. They'd been digging a network of tunnels at night with tools they'd smuggled from the workshop, and they dug their way to freedom right under my wall. That's when it finally sunk in: Prison Architect isn't really like other sims. Sure, there's the same management tasks like planning, construction, power and water distribution, budgeting and schedules—but no matter how hard you try to satisfy the needs of your civilian population, it won't change the fact that they're prisoners. Work hard at creating a humane facility and there may be no outright complaints, no violence, and no major disasters, but there will never, ever be real happiness. No one wants to be there, and even the best of wardens can't change that.

Prison Architect works well on both a large and small scale. The planning and construction of buildings is enjoyable and challenging, and I'd even find myself mentally planning projects when I wasn't actually playing. It can also require a laser-like focus on specific issues and even on individual inmates. After a virus swept through my prison, I had to check each individual prisoner for illness and lock the sick ones in their cells, one by one, to avoid spreading the disease further. Another time, an informant told me one of my inmates had been targeted for a hit because he was a former prison guard. I put the target in solitary while I set about planning a new protective custody wing to keep at-risk prisoners safe from other inmates. I eventually realized I hadn t paused the game while planning my new annex, and that he d been released back into gen-pop. I found him just in time to see him being stabbed to death in the cafeteria. Oopsie.

Trying to keep your prison free of drugs and weapons is a huge challenge until you learn a few tricks, and every time you turn around you'll find cellphones, drugs, and weapons arriving concealed in deliveries, smuggled in from other buildings, even thrown onto the grounds over your outer wall by visitors. Even when things are running smoothly it's hard not to feel paranoid and unsafe, leading to metal detectors at every door, tapped payphones and security cameras, frequent shakedowns and lockdowns of cellblocks, as well as an army of informants who provide good information but may wind up dead if anyone catches wind. It's an interesting feeling, staring at what is essentially a city similar to the ones in other simulation games, yet knowing every tiny little cartoon man on the screen hates you, is plotting against you, and wants nothing more than to leave your carefully constructed paradise far behind.

As grim as it all sounds, it's still a joy to play, a deeply engrossing exercise in planning and management, and there are plenty of ways to have additional fun, such as when I tried to escape from a modded-in Star Wars prison, and the time I built a prison to cater to a single inmate.

In Prison Architect, I'm always anxious when I'm done building my prison and the first inmates arrive. Have I forgotten something? Do I have enough of everything? Is this going to be a complete disaster? I'm feeling that doubly so today: I've spent ten game-days and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a very special prison. A luxury prison. It will house a single inmate, and he's due to arrive in a couple minutes.

The idea here isn't simply to build a prison for one inmate and see what happens. As I explained in my review, the first time I had prisoners escape my prison it genuinely hurt my feelings. I'd been trying very hard to meet the needs of my residents, to keep them calm and satisfied, and when five of them tunneled out I felt betrayed and embarrassed that all my humane efforts had been for naught. With my new prison, I want to see if it's possible to make an inmate so damn happy and comfortable that he never tries to escape, never hits a guard, never busts up the place, and never breaks any rules.

So, I've built the most luxurious prison cell I could manage. It's spacious, with large windows, wood and tile floors, a private bathroom and shower, a pool table, sofas, a telephone, several television sets and a radio. There's just a regular door on the cell and there will be no lockdown time on the schedule—my prisoner will be able to enter and leave his cell whenever he wants. 

There's also a roomy kitchen a short walk away with an eager staff of cooks on hand. There's an expansive, grass-covered exercise yard that overlooks a lake. There's a workshop, library, classrooms, common rooms, and a chapel. I've got an army of janitors and groundskeepers to keep the place tidy, and while there are a number of guards in my employ, none are assigned to rooms my inmate will spend time in, so he'll never feel like he's being oppressed or monitored. Sure, there's a fence around the jail—it's still a jail, after all—but it's hard to imagine it feeling less like a prison.

My sole inmate arrives, a 33-year-old convict named Sean Matile. He's serving a nine year sentence, perhaps ironically, for false imprisonment. He's also married and a father of four. He's guided into the reception area and searched for what I hope will be the only time during his stay here. My guard finds that Matile has attempted to smuggle a pair of gardening shears into jail, which seems an odd and incredibly uncomfortable choice.

The discovery of contraband means he won't be taken to his cushy cell but will instead spend a little time in solitary. Luckily, I've planned for this eventuality, and have a pleasant little box ready for him: bookshelves, sofa, TV, toilet and shower, even a phone. Unfortunately Matile is shackled so he can't enjoy the amenities, but hopefully he realizes this is more of a hotel than a prison.

Soon he's in his proper cell, where he slowly mopes around his new surroundings. After a look around, he drifts out to the yard for a bit, then moves to the canteen for a meal (high quality, of course). He heads back to his cell where he spends the entire night slowly pacing around instead of sleeping. I figure that's normal: who can sleep their first night in prison, especially having recently had a pair of hedge trimmers forcibly removed from his butt?

In the morning he showers, puts on a clean uniform, uses the payphone to talk to his family, and begins what will be his routine for the next several days: eating meals, watching TV in his cell, talking on the phone, and occasionally visiting the yard to stare at the lake. Soon he begins taking a workshop safety class, led by my construction foreman. He eventually passes the class—I'm quite proud—and from then on he spends several hours each day making licence plates and cutting logs. Matile has one other hobby, a mildly troubling one, which I'll get to in a minute.

There's a downside to a prison with only one inmate: it prevents me from reaching a few grant milestones, which ultimately limit Matile's options for rehabilitation. For example, since he's shown an aptitude for shop work, I'd like him to partake in a Carpentry Apprenticeship Program. The prerequisite, however, is the grant for the Prison Manufacturing Facility, which has its own prerequisite, the Prison Acclimatization and Engagement program. To complete this program I need to assign three inmates to work in the laundry, the kitchen, and the cleaning cupboard. I can't do that simply because I don't have enough inmates.

I consider constructing an entirely separate prison on the other side of the road, going as far as building a massive foundation, but then the reality sets in. That's a lot of extra work. New rooms and buildings, utilities, guard patrols, schedules and classes and staff and everything else that comes with running a real prison. It seems exhausting and pointless, especially since I've already got facilities to spare. Much as I don't want to mess up Matile's life by introducing new prisoners, I start planning a small cell block just outside Matile's hotel, capable of holding a couple dozen prisoners. Hopefully nobody will stab him to death.

While that construction is underway, the unfortunate time comes where I have to perform a search on Matile. See, he's been occasionally making trips up to the northern fence, where he mills around in the trees for a bit. These trips take place in the middle of the night. I know this is more than just a leisurely stroll.

I search his cell first (while he's at breakfast so he's not disturbed), and I also search the workshop while he's sleeping, finding nothing. Finally, I pat him down, and my guard finds some contraband: Matile has a cellphone. I'm relieved—for a guy who arrived with garden shears up his butt, I expected much worse—but I can't help but be a little disappointed. First of all, if it were drugs or booze, I might get a chance to use all those therapy rooms I built and use those psychologists I hired, who have spent weeks just hanging around in the offices I built for them. Alas.

Mainly I'm just annoyed because why would he need a cellphone at all? There are two phones in his cell—cell phones, I guess you'd call them—and several in the yard. Does he just want to play Flappy Bird or use Snapchat? Is Sprint's new friends and family plan that irresistible? Does he think I've tapped the payphones and I'm listening in on his calls?

I have, of course, tapped the payphones and have been listening in on his calls. I have an entire dedicated security room with guards assigned around the clock to monitor his conversations, which is how I confirmed my suspicions that he's been arranging for someone to visit the prison and chuck things over the fence for him. I know I could put a stop to this by building a second fence around the perimeter, but the idea isn't to prevent him from breaking the rules, the idea is to make him so damn content that he would never want to break the rules. Apparently, as swank as my prison is, it's just not enough to keep him completely happy.

As infractions go, it's not a major one. With no metal detectors or supervision, with no one restricting his movements or needing to open doors for him, Matile could have been smuggling kitchen utensils and workshop tools all the live long day, but has chosen not to. I guess that's a plus, and when his family arrives for a visit I don't think he'll have much to complain about.

I put the new cellblock online and receive a bunch of new inmates, which is strange for what has been feeling like a luxury hotel built on a college campus. Naturally, the whole place becomes more like a prison immediately. I begin finding drugs and booze in cells and thrown over the fence, there are brawls in the showers and regular tazings (at least my team of doctors finally have something to do). Luckily, Matile barely mixes with the new inmates. He's got a short stroll to the canteen and is done eating by the time the crowd arrives, and then he either goes back to his cell or to the workshop. Nobody messes with him, possibly because he's simply not around them enough.

In the end, Matile does escape my luxury prison, but in the legit way. He's paroled. On the one hand, it's nice to see him free. On the other, I'm left with a worrying thought. Will he have trouble adjusting to life on the outside, not for the usual reasons but simply because there aren't enough sofas and TVs and good, hot meals? I made his prison stay so damn comfortable, filled with freedom and luxury, it might be in his best interests to come for another visit.

Be good, Sean.

I was several hours into my first game of Prison Architect when I found myself humiliated. I'm talking genuine, utter, red-faced humiliation, complete with a trickle of perspiration and a vaguely sick feeling in the pit of my gut. I've been humiliated plenty of times in online games, but this was an entirely new experience for me in single-player.

I'd been playing Introversion Software's prison construction and management simulator the same way I play any other sim, by slowly expanding my network of buildings—cells, rec rooms, storage closets, administrative offices—while keeping an eye on my finances, staff, and current goals. Most of all, I'd been doing everything I could to meet the needs of my ever-growing population of inmates. If they complained about being hungry, I'd expand the kitchen, serve higher quality meals, and allow more time on their schedules for chow. If they complained about hygiene, a lack of recreation options, or that they missed their families, I'd stop everything and construct new facilities or activate new prisoner programs to accommodate them. As a result of this close attention I'd experienced no riots, no fist-fights, no unpleasantness of any kind. Everything seemed to be going great.

Then I received a notification that an escape tunnel had been found. Five prisoners in adjoining cells had smuggled in tools and burrowed to freedom right under my nose (and right under the prison's exterior wall). I immediately felt betrayed. I'd been bending over backwards to meet their needs, to run a clean, efficient, and extraordinarily humane prison. How could they do this to me? That's when the embarrassment hit, because something important and incredibly obvious simply hadn't dawned on me until that very moment: meeting an inmate's needs isn't the same thing as making them happy. Prison Architect isn't like other management sims where you deal with a restless and fickle population. There simply is no happy state for your residents. Maybe they don't want to start fires or lay into a guard with a power drill, but that doesn't mean they actually want to be there. It's prison. It's right in the title. No one wants to be there! Lesson learned, too late.

Building the prison of your dreams (or an inmate's nightmares) is accomplished in the same fashion as many other sims: drag an outline of a foundation, add doors, and pull electrical cables and water pipes into place. Designate the type of room it is and plop in the required equipment: cells just need a bed and toilet, offices need desks, chairs and file cabinets, and so on. Then, watch as your tiny workmen swarm around constructing it. The complexity sets in when you want to use these rooms. Kitchens and canteens can be designated to serve specific cellblocks, security cameras need to be connected to consoles in a command center, and guards need to be hired and assigned to monitor them. Building a workshop takes only a moment, but once it's in place you'll need to train inmates to work there, which requires an instructor, scheduled classes, the assignment of graduates (with work schedules), and an area to deliver license plates to for exporting and sale. It can be overwhelming at times, as your to-do list grows and grows—and as prisoners start walking out with tools under their jumpsuits—but it's also satisfying when all the pieces fall into place.

The Mean Mile

Prison Architect works well on a macro scale—managing your budget, staff, grants, utilities, and infrastructure, but at times requires a laser-like focus on specific issues and even on individual inmates. After a virus swept through the population I had to check each prisoner for infection (their faces turn green) and lock the sickies in their cells, one by one, to avoid spreading the disease further. Another time, an informant told me one inmate, a former prison guard, had been targeted for a hit. This inmate was important to me: I was chasing educational grant money and he was one of the very few students qualified to pass my general education class. I threw the target in solitary for an extended stay so no one could murder him while I set about planning a new protective custody wing, a tiny prison within my prison. When I was done I went to collect him from his cell but found his stay in solitary had expired because I'd left the clock running while planning my new facility. Whoops. After a frantic search I found him in the genpop canteen just in time to watch him get shivved by another prisoner. Double whoops.

Surrounding the simulation on all sides is cash. This is a privately run prison, which means the intake of new prisoners provides you with money, tempting you to cram as many bodies, sometimes too many, into your jail. The grants system, in addition to giving you more money, provides much-needed mission structure in the initially daunting sandbox mode. Applying for grants for programs like alcohol or drug addiction treatment, security training, labor skills classes, and even parole hearings and family visitations, gives you a list of criteria to meet, rewarding you in stages with cash. If you choose to play with random events enabled, you'll also experience kitchen fires, utility failures, and specific demands from the mayor, which periodically forces you to deal with a crisis, and sometimes several at once.

The tutorial campaign doesn't teach you, step-by-step, how to build a prison. Instead it puts you in charge of a series of prisons, each needing various problems solved, giving you a variety of experiences before you start your own prison. It's also the only part of the game to include human drama as you experience the personal stories of several inmates and perhaps get a chance to reflect on the tragic results of a broken system—in sandbox mode there's very little to humanize your cartoony little inmates, and no time to think about anything other than problems of logic and efficiency. The downside of the campaign is that it simply doesn't give you a clue about a large number of the game's elements and features. Once I'd begun sandbox mode, I found I had to pause the game to search Google, forums, or read the wiki to a little too frequently.

I experienced a small handful of bugs: most notably, I had to restart an entire chapter of the campaign because the game refused to recognize that I'd placed the correct number of chairs in a common room for an alcohol treatment program. PA's menus aren't great, either: every single placeable object is listed in the same menu, and the low-detail graphics make it hard to spot what you're looking for, meaning I found myself constantly doing text searches to find the right piece of equipment. (Objects in the menu are highlighted if they're needed for a room you're currently building, but if you're in the process of working on several rooms, which I often was, it's not entirely helpful.)

None of those issues prevent Prison Architect from being an incredibly engrossing balancing act, a simulation with the ability to surprise, challenge, and sometimes horrify you. While playing with a massive prison I'd downloaded from the Steam Workshop, a riot broke out because the mayor told me to remove all the TV sets from the prison or face a fine. Afterwards, while I stared at all the tiny bodies lying everywhere, drenched in blood, he called me again and casually told me I could put the TVs back. Sure, great, I'll do that once I've finished expanding the morgue. You can even experience the horrors from the other side of the bars: PA's Escape Mode lets you play as an inmate in your own jail, or one you've downloaded, and challenges you to form a gang and bust out.

Back to my very first prison. After those five inmates tunneled to freedom, my approach changed. I never became an evil warden like you see in the movies, but I dispensed with the warm and cuddly notion that I was overseeing a bunch of citizens who could be made happy with a nice library or a pool table in the common room. I instituted regular shakedowns (searching cell blocks) and bangups (sending everyone to their cells to be frisked), and closely monitored prisoners to see who was tired during the day (as the result of staying up all night digging with cafeteria forks.) I installed metal detectors outside every single door which led to a shocking number of tools and weapons being confiscated. I bullied inmates with extended stays in solitary until they agreed to become informants. I had guard dogs patrolling cellblock corridors 24/7 and officers patrolling the perimeter of the grounds, where contraband was often found, the result of accomplices lobbing things over the walls at prescribed times. How do prisoners arrange this? Probably by using the dozens of cellphones, smuggled in with deliveries, that I find every time I do a search.

Even with those harsh new measures in place, I continued to find the beginnings of escape tunnels. Guard dogs can detect tunnels, so the inmates, rather than digging straight toward the wall, were digging in circuitous paths to avoid the patrolling dogs. Clever, I'll give them that. Soon I had hounds not just walking the interior of the cellblocks but around the outside as well, and finally the tunnel-digging ceased. I haven't lost a prisoner since, except from the occasional cafeteria shanking or overdose from smuggled drugs. That's about as happy as things get in my grim little city.

It's been a little while since our last  Show Us Your Rig, but we're coming back on a high note! We've featured Introversion Software before, back when Chris Delay showed us his custom built studio, but now that Prison Architect has officially launched, we're back with another member of the team. Alistair Lindsay is the Audio Architect on Prison Architect, and gave us a look at the musical paradise he works in. Guitars, keyboard, and more knobs and switches than I would know what to do with. Knobfeel, eat your heart out.

Lindsay was kind enough to show off his space and give some of the most detailed answers we've seen on the series yet.

What's in your PC?

It's custom built for creating audio by IntaAudio in the UK and is based around a quad i7. It's a few years old now and I've been waiting to finish work on Prison Architect so I can install my new PC. Due to all the other equipment and the number of DAW (digital audio workstation) software items and plug-ins that all have to play nicely with each other, swapping my machine over takes a day or two before I can be 100% happy the system is running as it should, and could certainly not be undertaken mid-project. I'm a freelancer, so waiting to be entirely project-free can take a while...

Anyway, I'm utterly salivating at the thought of using my new machine, which this time will be an Intel i7 Eight Core 5960X 3.0Ghz system with 64GB fast DDR4 quad channel, two 500GB SSDs, Dual DVI, running Windows 7 (very stable for my audio software), and will feature ultra quiet cooling to give me the completely silent running that I crave. Connected to this is a specialist UAD Apollo audio interface with high quality AD/DA converters in it and a bunch of its own dedicated processors that do further DSP tasks on the signals coming through the converters in real-time (zero-perceivable latency).

This set-up allows me to run in software multiple virtual recreations of various items of recording studio equipment. So that's why there isn't a huge mixing console in here and why there aren't racks and racks of special signal processors lining the walls any more either.

What's the most interesting/unique part of your setup?

Hard to pin down really. In one sense its probably the building itself. Being completely sound proof and windowless, when I step outside its like teleporting back from deep-space to planet earth, as one's nose, eyes, and ears are suddenly bombarded by the real world stimuli of the rural country setting in which my studio sits—a huge contrast to the silent and still atmosphere inside.

The exterior is built out of high density blocks 9 inches thick, then there's an inner wall which isn't allowed to touch the concrete floor and has to rest on special pads, and also hangs from special clips from the roof trusses above the ceiling rather than screwing directly into them. The ceiling board is 2 inches thick and has 20" of sound insulation sitting on top of it. The building is air-tight. Why go to all this trouble? Well, complete silence means I can record very very quiet sounds in here and make them sound like they are really loud if I want to. It means I can record sound FX sources or musical instruments at any time of the day or night and never have to worry about a passing car, singing bird life, or startled pheasant ruining an otherwise perfect performance. Laboratory conditions. It also means I can turn my Marshall stack up to eleven, although my ears almost bled when I turned it up to just past 3, and I don't want to go deaf so......

What's always within arm's reach on your desk?

My guitars which I use a LOT in my work, and the various bits of kit, new and vintage, that interact with them, to make any of the textures and sounds I end up creating for the music I make in here. I also have clever software that converts guitar playing into MIDI data in real-time if I want, allowing me to control anything from a digitally modeled kazoo to a whole orchestra from any of my guitars. I do play the piano keyboard too, but using the guitars instead creates an entirely different feel because the way you phrase or build chords or melody on a guitar is totally different to how its done on a piano keyboard. I feel this is important because there are so many great game composers out there already who use the piano keyboard as their interface with their computer, and I guess I want to sound and think differently to those guys rather than just compete directly with them. Same ends (creating music) but just using different dialects I guess.

I also do a heck of a lot of sound FX creation work too, so I think my 'sound designer head' would want to butt in and say that the collection of microphones I keep are also a vital part of my set up, and also my portable field-recorder. Zoom in on one of the builders in Prison Architect and you'll occasionally hear them whistling while they work. That's me whistling while I walked across the fields round here one afternoon!

What are you playing right now?

I've been so busy with work all year that time to play games seems to have migrated for the duration, and I am looking forward to getting back to some serious chill out time when I can get my hands on a mouse or controller for non-work purposes! Luckily the games I have been working on are really cool to play for fun anyway (perk of the job, right?) so the short answer to your question would be Prison Architect and RimWorld a heck of a lot, closely followed by Lumino City, Full Mojo Rampage, and Staxel. I wish I could get my hands on Battlefield 1942 again- the way you could jump out of one plane and parachute into another in mid air was sheer quality- I love surreal humour in games wether its deliberate or not!

What's your favorite game and why?

The one that really sparked it all off for me was Half Life. I had just got my first job in the games industry at Rare Ltd and Half Life had not long been released. The sense of being within a story that was unfolding around me was so immersive, and way that the sound design, use of music, and art style carried that atmosphere along was brilliantly done for its day. I never really got into the sequels as much as that first one.

I have a lot of love for 8-bit games from my childhood too by the way, especially Jeff Minter's games—I think their sense of surreal humour and psychadelic sound fx must have affected my young mind! 

Prison Architect has finally tunneled its way out of Early Access, after 3 long years of additions and improvements. Check out the trailer above for the pitch, plus some stylish country scat.

With the now widespread popularity of the Early Access model, for many people this may well be one of those 'oh I thought that was out already' releases. If you're the type who likes to wait until devs tell you their game is 'done', however, this is your cue to start building some prisons.

There's been all sorts of excited chatter about Prison Architect since before the alpha was even available, Introversion blending free-form construction and personality into a compelling management sim. Look, like this:

I'm still waiting for the (sadly non-existent) Democracy 3 tie in that lets you choose whether to give prisoners the right to vote.

No one wants to end up in jail, but there’s something fascinating about life in the clink. There have been some great fictional prisons in literature and cinema—and video games too. The following hoosegows are some of the toughest, most brutal, and hardest to escape from in gaming. Some horrible prisons, both new and old, have made their way onto this list since we first wrote it.

From freezing Russian labor camps to max security space-jails, these are scariest imaginary prisons on PC.

B.J. Blazkowicz had to shoot an awful lot of Nazis to escape from the labyrinthine Castle Wolfenstein. As prisons go, Wolfenstein does offer some perks: ample access to weaponry, secret Nazi treasure, and delicious, hearty meals. On the downside, the dogs aren't very friendly and there's a giant Nazi with two machine guns standing between you and the exit. If you take too many bullets, you'll have to resort to eating dog food. Yuck.

Batman famously has one of the best rogue's galleries in comics, and his nemeses inevitably end up in Arkham, Gotham's prison for the criminally insane. 2009's brilliant Arkham Asylum makes the prison itself the star, imagining it as a densely interconnected 3D playground in the vein of Super Metroid. As Batman gains new bits of equipment he opens up new ways to explore and unlocks new shortcuts. In the end, Arkham Aslyum has some great depictions of Batman's villains and the dark knight's abilities, but mastering the asylum is the true joy.

The Souls series has some of the toughest prisons in gaming. Dark Souls starts you off in one, the Undead Asylum, which is guarded by an overweight demon that ruins newcomers on the reg. Dark Souls 2 has the Lost Bastille, a prison made entirely of cold grey stone, patrolled by undead knights and exploding mummies, and wraps with a boss battle against three nimble suits of armor. But Dark Souls 3’s Irithyll Dungeon is the prison-iest of all (most prison-y?). It glows a sickly green and greets you with the Jailers, spooky robed guards that lower your max health just by looking your way. Explore the cells and eventually you’ll run into the wretches, grotesque human-dragon hybrids, botched experiments of the Lothric family. Deeper in you’ll find giants taken prisoner, massive sewer rats looking for a snack, a downright mean basilisk ambush, some items that sound off a large scream when picked up to alert nearby enemies, a gluttonous humanoid with an enlarged hand for a head called—what else—the Monstrosity of Sin, and some sewer centipedes. Don't Google them.

It’s an awful place that folds over on itself in a disorienting search for one key after another, delaying your escape just beyond its rows and rows of thick iron bars. Get in, save Siegward, and never return. 

Protagonist Vito Scaletta gets busted for selling stolen ration stamps and ends up in the clink. This is an act break of sorts, separating the game’s 1940s and 1950s chapters. The slow walk through the gates, being yelled at by jeering prisoners, is straight out of The Shawshank Redemption. You pass the time by punching people and scrubbing toilets, before emerging into a terrifying world of quiffs and rock and roll.

JC Denton defects from UNATCO and becomes a wanted man. He’s captured and wakes up in a mysterious underground cell. With the help of a creepy AI calling itself Daedalus he manages to escape, only to discover that the sinister prison facility is located below UNATCO’s Liberty Island headquarters. Most people who mess with Majestic 12 end up dead, but JC uses his nano-powers to break out and flee to Hong Kong.

Butcher Bay is a space-prison for the galaxy’s toughest, gruffest space-bastards. Escape From Butcher Bay sees the titular Riddick, played by Vin Diesel, breaking out of this maximum security sci-fi prison by stabbing, choking, shooting, and sneaking past its small army of guards. But, even though escape is his top priority, he still finds the time to enter bare-knuckle boxing matches and shiv other prisoners.

“It used to be a high security prison,” says Alyx Vance, gravely. “It’s something much worse now.” She always was good at introductions. Nova Prospekt is an old prison that the Combine have converted into a facility for processing any ‘anti-citizen’ who fights against their tyranny. ‘Processing’ meaning being turned into a hideous half-machine monster. A grim place indeed, but no match for Gordon’s gravity gun.

The Suffering is a mostly forgotten 2004 shooter from Midway, set on the twisted Carnate Island off the coast of Maryland. The penitentiary itself, where you're on death row, is just the beginning—the whole island has a dark history, including an insane asylum and a whole lot of executions. Hell breaks loose immediately when an earthquake calls up hordes of twisted monsters, who proceed to wreak havoc on the prison. It all may sound like standard horror fare, but The Suffering stood out thanks to some fabulously creepy designs by Stan Winston Studios. Those are monsters we would not like to be trapped on an island with.

Probably the toughest prison on the list, Vorkuta is grim Russian labour camp and one of the most memorable levels in Black Ops. With help from Viktor ‘Gary Oldman’ Reznov, your fellow prisoners, a mini-gun called the Death Machine, and giant slingshots loaded with explosives you battle to freedom and destroy half the prison for good measure. Shame about that rubbish vehicle section at the end.

The prison ship Purgatory, operated by the Blue Suns mercenary company, is where unstable biotic Jack finds herself. Commander Shepard, hunting for the galaxy’s baddest asses, flies there in order to recruit her. Before it was a prison, the ship was used to transport animals, which explains the tiny cages masquerading as cells. It’s not all bad, though: if it gets crowded, the Blue Suns will dump you on a nearby planet.

This desert prison used to be a peaceful coal mining town, but now it’s a hellish jail. Cloud and co. are dumped here after a misunderstanding, and have to earn their freedom by entering, and winning, a chocobo race in the Golden Saucer theme park that looms over the prison. As far as I know, this is the only time in gaming history where you escape from jail by riding a giant chicken. Hopefully it’s not the last.

That’s not a very nice name. Why not Warmridge Prison? Dishonored protagonist Corvo Attano is sent here after being wrongly accused of murdering the Empress he was charged to protect. It’s an imposing building—designed by the same guy who dreamed up Nova Prospekt, Viktor Antonov—and serves as the game’s tutorial. Murderous inmates, brutal guards, and rats are among this foul place’s residents.

This Alaskan military base isn’t technically a prison, but Solid Snake finds himself imprisoned in a cell there during the first MGS. There are a few ways to escape, but my favourite is spilling a bottle of ketchup and lying down next to it. The idiot guard thinks you’ve killed yourself and rushes in to help, giving you a window to break out.

Only slightly harder to endure than listening to the band Bastille, this famous French prison was notorious for its brutal treatment of prisoners. It’s here that the foppish hero Arno Dorian learns how to fight, and ultimately becomes an assassin. After the French Revolution it was demolished and replaced with a monument, but it will live forever in the decidedly average Assassin’s Creed Unity. C’est la vie.

Hell's Prison, posted on Reddit, is just one of thousands of devious, depressing prisons concocted by Prison Architect players. There's probably a harsher prison lurking on a hard drive somewhere, but Hell's Prison is a good example of how totalitarian Prison Architect lets you be as a warden. 

"At any given time about 90-100 prisoners are in the initial stages of starvation and taking damage," reads the description. "The entire prison is one giant infirmary so that doctors automatically tend to them. Prisoners who are close to death are brought to the medical beds by the guards. I have yet to lose a prisoner to starvation."

Prison Architect's Steam Workshop is also full of fantastic creations and recreations, like Alcatraz. Now that's a tough prison.

One of the most famous video game prisons, this is where you start your adventure in Oblivion. You don’t know what your crime was or how you ended up there—you’re supposed to fill in the blanks—but a fateful encounter with the Emperor of Tamriel leads to your escape and transformation into a hero. You can return later and take the opportunity to teach gobshite Valen Dreth some manners.

We got a chance to play Prison Architect's new 'Escape Mode' with Introversion Software co-founders Chris Delay and Mark Morris on this week's PC Gamer Show, and I was impressed with how much it flips the game on its head. After being a building game for 36 months of early access, Escape Mode lets you take control of individual characters, fire guns, and personally do everything else you've only been able to view at a distance until now. Watch the video above to see Delay give us a hands-on look at the chaos that can ensue. Prison Architect will be leaving early access, along with Escape Mode, on October 6th.

The PC Gamer Show is our weekly livestreamed podcast. You can catch the show live on Tuesdays at 1 PM PDT on our Twitch channel, or and the archive of past episodes right here.