Prison Simulator Review - More misses than hits

In Baked Game’s Prison Simulator, one of the most ominous spaces to the public opens up to be lived and played in. The game offers the chance to don the uniform of a prison guard. They are to patrol a prison housing dangerous criminals put behind bars for nefarious activities.

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It is up to the players to choose what kind of a guard they wish to be. In Prison Simulator, players have the freedom to be one by the book or a fiend with a nightstick and taser in hand.

Suiting up the Prison Simulator

Naming the inmates (Image via Prison Simulator)

The game offers two modes - New Game which has a story and Freeplay. Players can choose among a number of difficulties. The hardest level available is merciless - it is similar to permadeath except “not only you die - your save file does too”.

Once the difficulty is selected, the game asks the player to name their prison and create the prisoners. In total, sixteen prisoners can be made. Their names, voices, bodies, faces, and skin tones can be customized.

This provides players with the silly little option of naming people they want to send to prison. As the developers say, everything but “celebrities or politicians”. There is also the option of randomizing all of these.

Next is the gang creator. There is the possibility of three gangs, and the player has to choose a logo, name, and which prisoner is part of which gang. Like the previous option, this can also be randomized. Confirm, and the game kicks in with a bit of montage intro.

Being a prison guard

The main duty of the player is to carry out the daily duties assigned to them each day. After completing each task, players are allowed time off. They can spend that time doing a number of different available activities. Players can work out, practise shooting guns, or play darts with a colleague. They can also skip the time by sitting on a bench.

The game has a respect system. Players have a certain percentage of respect from the guards and another number from the prisoners. Various actions affect these numbers. Falling too far with the guards would get the player fired. Prisoners not respecting enough would start a riot.

Various duties recycle from day-to-day. Players are asked to do a morning or evening attendance call where they walk around with a clicker and note everyone’s presence against a list.

Prisoners are to be taken to the workshop and given tools to work with. During the activity, some of them may slack, and some may get violent. Players can reprimand them or physically knock them out. Prisoners are also sometimes taken to the yard.

Another task ascribed to the guard is to clean different parts of the prison. The map has other rooms, and most of them are interactable. As a guard, the player also must check for contrabands in the prisoner’s cells and on them.

Looking for Contraband (Image via Prison Simulator)

The search includes looking inside the tap, the toilet, under the bed, and the sink. Players may find legal food objects like chips and chocolates. They can also find illegal contraband from time to time.

On finding something, players are given the option to take it for themselves or secure it for the prison or leave it where it is. The last choice raises the respect the guard has among the prisoners. The player can take it as long as no other officer is watching.

Finding contraband (Image via Prison Simulator)

Some prisoners would be open to trade. Players can sell or buy stuff from them. Moreover, prisoners and guards also provide side missions. These can be done during the free time between tasks for extra money and respect.

When all the tasks are done, go to the briefing room to report to the officer. They allow the player to end the day and give a report of how the day’s activity has affected the guard’s pay and respect.

A cool guy or a total jerk

In Prison Simulator, the player can toe the line by acting neutrally or go overboard on either side. They can side with the prisoners by turning a blind eye to their activities and contrabands, or they can beat up the inmates for absolutely no reason at all. Throughout this cycle, they take the prison to the top of the leaderboard.

Where Prison Simulator shines is in its element of brevity and fun. In the first few hours, the different activities that fill up the gameplay actually make the player feel like they are acting as a corrections officer. They have to inspect packages that arrive for the prisoners and make sure they don’t have any illegal stuff.

Cleaning a gun (Image via Prison Simulator)

Guns are to be cleaned and stored properly. Broken cameras are to be fixed. Prison Simulator has done a nifty job with this. Each part of the gun is to be dismantled and individually polished, wiped and cleaned. It really dials up the reality of these activities.

The punishments that can be meted out to the passengers for bad behavior also manage to showcase the difficulty of dealing with the criminals and the length that one has to go to enforce rules. Players can confine prisoners to cells, take away their phone privilege, and, at worst, put them in solitary.

Strapping in (Image via Prison Simulator)

The game also has a death row and an execution room. The experience of leading a man towards his death, strapping them on, asking them their final words, and then flipping the switch is a surreal moment.

And then it fizzles out

The gravity of the position is what the game sorely lacks. The player can beat a prisoner up without reason, and they would lose their respect point. The riot that happened within the first week did not feel like it had any real stakes to it. None of the prisoners were even armed in this riot, and they all fell pretty easily because I had a handgun.

In Prison Simulator, there are no spoken voice lines but only mumbled gibberish noises. This severely affects any sort of investment into the characters. The background music also gets tedious when one is six hours into the game.

The biggest caveat is the gameplay gets repetitive after a while real fast. The actions of prisoner induction in and out are extremely fun and almost directly remind one of Papers, Please. But when the same activities are recycled and arranged as daily duties, the chores become dull day after day.

Conflicts with prisoners or between gangs also do not pan out into some larger narrative. The story takes a long time to start and moves at an extremely slow pace, and feels disjointed as it jumps from one moment to another. The serious lack of immersion affects the replayability of the game.

Performance and graphics

Prison Simulator was played on the following setup:

Processor: Intel Core i5-9400F
RAM: 8 GB DDR4
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 1060 OC 6GB
Hard Drive Space: 1 TB + 240 GB SSD

Prison Simulator is not a graphics-intensive game and, in that regard, can be played pleasurably in most computer systems.

Passing the verdict

Prison Simulator has a lot of potential. The developers have gotten the basics right. One gets to enjoy many of the different jobs and aspects of a prison guard. One can take a bribe from a prisoner or bribe a guard if they catch the player doing something illegal. Prison Simulator also provides lively places like the canteen, yard, and kitchen.

The nifty hiding places (Image via Prison Simulator)

One of the nicest touches to be found in the game is one of the wall sketches done by a prisoner. It showed a woman and a child, presumably the inmate’s family. It was a subtle reflection that these people are human too, and they had-have a life outside.

But beyond the first few hours, Prison Simulator runs stale. The repetitive actions, the mumbling drones, and the eerie quiet of the prison drown out the fun once the player gets settled in. The game needs to introduce variability to the behaviors and movements of the inmates. More consequences to the actions of the guard should also be included.

With patches and fixes coming in, the developers will fill the Prison Simulator with much more content to interact with and enjoy. Until then, the game remains a fun-filled ride that runs out of gas after a while.