After the last post I thought I would go back and write a list of goods and bads for Prison Architect as the best game in the world. and here it is, starting with the positives:
-Firstly the way the GUI is set up is really good. All of the
items are little tiles in menus, from foundations to objects to floors to
walls. Now this is nothing special and can be found in many other games, I
know. But there is a very nicely presented as well as functional clipboard type
presentation of all the staffing, prisoners, and financial reports which is
really good way of having a large menu on screen. This is minimised at the
click of a button.
-Also the idea of foundations is really nice. it is something very
realistic and means that the mechanics of the game work really well as well as
that sense of realism. This is something I would definitely like to see in my
ideal game.
-The way the people move around is very simple but very effective.
There is no moving legs, occasional arms and head move too, as well as it being
very obvious when they have handcuffs on etc. This simplicity is not only
effective but also quite funny. For example, when the workers are carrying
doors or tables, it just looks like doors or tables moving about the place and
is quite quirky. This is something else which a game has to be. A little bit
comical and a little bit light hearted designed with a sense of humour. After
all it is a game.
-Obviously the game works on a very simple grid. Yet again basic
and easy-to-use but also allows for ones imagination to get a bit carried away
as well as mean that there is a lot more functionality in the game if there is
that grid. Take Minecraft for example, the idea of blocks means you can
build great big structures, but the physics mean that the grid adhered to is
so controllable and neat. Often people talk
about Minecraft OCD, which I have been diagnosed with by my friends,
and I think this comes about by the lack of any roughness with the grid system.
The reason why I think this should be applied to a perfect game is that it
gives the player the possibility to do so much more, rather than struggling to
even create a basic vehicle in something like Garry's Mod, and also allows for
greater precision and neatness. A tidy game is a good game
The things which make Prison Architect not the best game in the
world:
-The topic: Prisons aren't very exciting, at the bottom of it, but
Prison Architect does bring an awful lot to the table when it comes to the
topic and makes it very fun in breaking up fights and sorting people
out etc etc, but it is more of a game of sorting people rather than managing a
business, which what I think should be the focus of the best game in the world.
-You are paid every 24 in-game hours which is roughly around 25
minutes. It needs to be an hourly pay system and there also needs to be a
better balance between money earnt and the cost of building things, as the
current game doesn't allow, after then initial grants have been spent, for much
in the way of earning money and therefore expansion. There are ways of sort of
cheating, which is effective, but also it's not very ethical and takes a bit of
the fun out of earning all of your money and developing your prison
fairly and by the book.
-Apart from those two features, there isn't a lot else which is
wrong with the game, and it is only in Alpha. Some things like the paths of
Guards and how quickly they respond to incidents, which one is selected for
each incident and things like that needs improving, but this is even an issue
in games like SimCity 5, where the traffic goes round and round in loops to get
to places when it wouldn't do that in real life, so it is not a unique issue
and in all fairness to the game, I bloomin' love it.
So Prison Architect is a step in the right direction, but mainly
the business aspect of the game doesn't quite make it the best possible game I
can find. Nevertheless, go and play it if you are at all interested by what you
have just read. I have already lost an entire weekend to it, and I have only
just started playing it.
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