PixelBoy: Two completely different games with different gameplay.
rtcvb32: Somehow i thought Prison Architect came first and then Escapists is based on the same engine thus just a different mode. I'm not sure. Plus the asthetics is similar too.
Prison Architect uses custom engine, The Escapists uses Clickteam Fusion 2.5.
I was a Kickstarter backer for the The Escapists, so I am fairly certain that I backed an original game, and not any modification of another game.
If you look at them closely, you will see that they don't look much alike, except for the top-view of the prison world. The Escapists is much more pixel arts, and closer to the author's another game Spud's Quest, whereas Prison Architect has scenes that look like a visual novel, and the prison view is much more detailed.
Obviously they have something borrowed from one another, like if you look at the small game title picture on Steam pages, both games have a bunch of people, prisoners and guards, standing in a similar formation with the game title above their heads. Either a very lucky coincidence, or really borrowed from the other game.
But otherwise I can't see much similarities.
In one game you need to run a prison, in another you need to run away from prison.
Presumably you like one if you like another, but that's really it.
