As part of an exciting month of the free September Games With Gold titles, you best get yourself a warden uniform on and work on your best prison planning skills as Prison Architect: Xbox One Edition is free right now!
Prison Architect does exactly what it says on the tin. You make a prison from scratch; designing it, building it, filling it with staff and inmates, before being left to run it. Simple eh? No is the defining answer to this question because like similar sim type games, everything is complex and you’re left having to deal with all the minute details like power, water supplies, food, and shelter. You’re forever having to balance the books and work out the fine line between prisoner needs and wants, to hard discipline and leading a dictator-like state behind bars. It’s up to you to choose your path.
To guide you through it there is a mode called “Prison Stories” with five narratives that weave a prison story from within your jail while teaching you the basics of running it. There’s one where you have to build an execution area for someone who has been sentenced to death for killing his wife, or another where you have to quell a prison riot and a hostage situation, and then clean up the mess. This is a brilliant way of teaching you how to play the game properly, but the stories themselves are really entertaining and absorbing too.
Prison Architect: Xbox One Edition is a great sim game for you budding wardens out there, so the fact that it’s stripped of its £19.99 price tag for Xbox Live Gold Members is good news. Simply head on over to the Microsoft Store and start downloading it immediately, for free!
Also available, if you happen to enjoy the experience, is a brand new bundle – appropriately named the Prison Architect DLC Bundle – to add lots of extra content for only £11.19 (usually £15.99). It includes the All Day and A Night DLC, Psych Ward DLC and Escape Mode DLC, which provide new maps, wardens, the chance to be a prisoner, and much more.
And don’t forget to check out the rest of the Games With Gold titles for September too.
Game Description:
Take control of the building and running of a maximum security prison as the critically acclaimed lock-em-up arrives on Xbox One! In Prison Architect you will see the impact of your grand design on the lives of your inmates; be it a utopic centre for rehabilitation, a brutal Super Max Prison or anything in between. Even when all of your prisoners’ needs are met, remember one thing – it’s still a prison and no one really wants to be there.
