Interesting looking game. I can't tell by the video, so does anyone know what the angle is?

Is it a scathing commentary on the US prison system where you build for-profit prisons and sue the State for not sending enough "business" your way (oh noes, lost profits!). Or does this sit on the other side of the fence and act as a way of desensitizing people to the horrors and brutality of a prison nation, ultimately resulting in passive acceptance?

That said, the escape mode sounds pretty cool. Do you get to bribe guards to help you out? If not, do you get to sue for breach of your First Amendment rights?

Its certainly somewhat satirical and "blackly" humoured. I believe theres a demo, so I'm sure you can try that.

I for one plan on putting a pool table in my execution chamber.

I don't know what is so dark about that.

Sadly, it is.

I'm waiting to hear about executions becoming public events and the concession rights being sold. Get your McD's Burger and a Coke while you watch the prisoner fry at the Monsanto Electro-Dome!

They used to be all the time, in most countries. Why not try it again? :P

While Ancient Rome takes the cake on turning capital punishment into a rock concert, I still have to give my Blue Ribbon to the French peddlers who would set up booths and sell guillotine ear rings during executions. :P

It's neither. It's a mostly accurate, highly detailed, "realistic" simulator, and where it is inaccurate, is errs toward humanist policies and general optimism.

The prison is not "for profit", it's on a budget. The key difference between the game and real life is that money scalped from real for-profit prisons can be spent on hookers, blow, luxury yachts and whatnot. None of that is in the game to reward you; the only satisfaction the game provides is a well-run facility.

The supply of prisoners is guaranteed, and you get money for rehabilitation, while deaths are a nope. Rehabilitation is shown to be factually effective, more so than in real life.

On the other hand, when prisoners are abused, they are more likely to reoffend and more likely to riot. Riots are super fucking costly and you don't want one happening at your facility.

Furthermore, officials who push for moar oppression are portrayed as corrupt assholes who don't end well. You are unsubtly encouraged to do better than that (but there are opportunities to be a corrupt asshole instead).

The game starts with an uncharacteristically swift execution of a murderer with no risk of reoffending. The death penalty is shown to be fucking terrible. Then there are criminals who are liabilities and are better off not existing (it is implied they pulled strings to have that other guy executed). And small-time offenders. And everyone in between.

Prisoners in the game involve each other in plots, thus, mass incarceration as a crime prevention policy is implied to be ineffective.

The game juxtaposes abstracted pip art and realistic, graphic comic-book art, to make the player associate pips with real humans. When a pip dies, it's meant to be unsettling, rather than hur hur amusing.

You're hooked aren't you?

Between this and Terraria you seriously need to become a city planner or an architect. :P

Not quite. It's yet another game which is terrible on my laptop. Unlike Terraria (which is just small but works ok), in Prison Architect some sprites, particularly sleep echomimetics ("Zz") and blood, are messed up. I can handle the small screen but not the messed-up sprites. So at home, I'm hooked on Necrodancer and Maj'Eyal.

Presuming you're running it at 1366 or 1360 x 768, try it at 1280x720 resolution if you already havent - makes a massive difference for me (I didnt have any issues running it on the whole until I built a 2000 con supermax clink - but that res change really made a huge difference in performance). I'll have a look as I did have a list of other tweaks somewhere around (though that might have gone with the old HD).
Hope that helps.