If you missed Prison Architect when it hit Early Access in 2013 then you missed one of the most singular mashups of cute visuals and human suffering this side of Lemmings.
You'll get the chance to right that wrong this Spring when Prison Architect launches on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. I recently caught up with Gareth Wright, design manager at Double Eleven, the developer handling this console adaptation. Wright talks me through all the changes coming in this new version, which you can see in the video above.
Prison Architect is a real-time management game in which you build and operate a prison. You decide everything from the layout to the daily schedules of your inmates to what those inmates are allowed to do. Gradually, conflicts arise between human dignity and the bottom line, such as whether you circumvent cell size limitations to squeeze a few extra pins into your block.
Spend enough time with this game and you'll gain a little insight into our own prison system and the big business of rehabilitation. It's a topic most of us have little exposure to, but certainly makes for an engrossing - if sometimes horrifying - game.
