As I was digging through the latest GOG sale (which is the Pick 5 for $10 on 21 different indie games Black Friday special), I noticed that they had all of Introversion's games on there. It made me think for a second: where the hell has Introversion been?

After looking them up, I found out that they are currently in Alpha on their newest game, Prison Architect. Basically, if you like Theme Hospital, Dungeon Keeper, and shit like that, this will suit your fancy. You are in charge of building a maximum security prison. That's it. You build a prison and make sure it stays running...or that it all goes to hell and turns out a lot like the prison riot in Natural Born Killers. Whichever you prefer...

Nonetheless, I'm baffled by how I'm JUST NOW finding out about this, especially since it's been in alpha for a while!!!

Anyone else have love for Introversion out there? Are you going to buy into the alpha?

Looks great. Gonna try this.

I bought Prison Architect a few weeks ago, its pretty neat, still pretty buggy but fun none the less and they seem to update it weekly or bi-weekly. Just needs more, which will come.

EDIT: Forgot to mention you can get 10% off if you enter 'folsom' as a coupon/voucher when you buy it. That makes it $27 USD

That trailer they did where they are listing all the bugs and
Telling you that the alpha is unfinishable.

Because it still an alpha. how much coverage do you really expect of a game so early in development? with no even a target window for release. the developers admit they have no idea when the game will done. other than a note saying it exist there is nothing else to say.

As others have said, it's still a very early alpha. There's quite a few bugs, major systems are missing, some systems have already been totally reworked since the initial alpha release.

There's a lot of promise, but I imagine they probably don't care about marketing the game to anyone other than big indie enthusiasts at the moment.

Introversion had been whiling away the years on their procedural heist game(?) Subversion. Eventually, it was clear that Subversion was never going to see the light of day and they scrapped maybe four(?) years of work and rolled a few of the mechanics into Prison Architect. I'm pretty sure the only reason you can buy-into the alpha is because it was the only way for Introversion to keep their company solvent.

There's a ton of talent an innovation at Introversion but it's a huge bummer for everyone that Subversion didn't pan out.

I realize I'm kind of shallow for saying so, but I have a hard time buying into a Theme Hospital style game that doesn't look as good as Theme Hospital despite being made like 15 years later.

Sounds like Prison Tycoon I tried when I was younger. I liked it but didn't fully understand the mechanics and my computer wasn't powerful enough to run it that well since it was shared by 5 people all doing their own thing, making it run slow. But I would like to give this game a try. I've been looking for a sim/management type game for a while now. Thanks for sharing this!

Nice find. I really liked those games. I'm gonna try this out.

strangely i thought people knew about this game

Rock Paper Shotgun had a pretty excellent feature on this game the other day, which can be found here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/26/impressions-prison-architect/

Certainly made me interested in the game! Not interested enough to put down money for an alpha, but I'll buy it once it's officially out for sure.

Just saw this go up on Steam in their new 'Early Access Games' and almost passed over it until I saw that Introversion was making it. I'm interested now, but don't think I'll plop down 30 bucks for it until I hear a little more about it.

No clue why more people aren't talking about this one yet, I'm sure it will blow up though when it's finished. Game is super fun.

Same reason ppl arent jumping up and down about kerbal space program on steam,

A. those who are interested already own it (at least prison artchitect ppl dont have to wait for their steam codes, kerbals are "tba" )

B. the game is FAR from finished , so i personally dont want to rally people to something that may possible change alot and therefore risk being misrepresented like for instance .. TOWNS :(

C. its a niche sim-game hardly as much broad appeal as latest 3d boob/guns/zombies game. so the fact theres a discussion about it ON THE DAY OF STEAM LAUNCH is pretty good.

I'll buy it once it is released. Seems like fun but i would rather wait until it is complete.

Sjin has been making a let's play of it that has been getting quite a lot of attention.

There is a lot of attention if you visit/indie pc gaming sites and its also not done.

It really does look interesting, but it is in alpha. So that is an instant, no-go for me.

They talked about it for a good while on Rebel FM.~ But that was a couple of episodes ago.

$30?! Seems a bit much to ask for...

Yeah I have been really interested in picking this up, but I find it really difficult to drop 30 dollars on a game like this. I can be completely off, but it looks more along the lines of a 15 dollar game.

@ssully: for me it was worth the $50 I paid (All their games, Soundtracks and name in the game). I am a big fan of these types of games though so I can understand how others might not see the value in it.
Also the only reason I got myself in the game was to be able to put myself in the chair(and also support the developers)

But there's so much stuff going on in the game and updates being added that I kinda wish I had paid more for it.

@zeforgotten: I will have to look into it more. I put more time into defcon then I care to admit and I am super bummed subversion never saw the light of day, so I definitely think they have what it takes to make this game good.

Even after watching the quick look, I really feel like 30$ for this alpha build is a bit too much. I know I'm not the only person thinking it. One lot size to build on, a lot of bugs and WIP content. (That I could see from the quick look).

@blu3v3nom07 said:

Who still listens to Rebel FM?

@killerclaw: Three lot sizes actually. And sure there are bugs and WIP content. It's an alpha. They also ask for 30 bucks so that they "only" get people who really want to play this, using the idea that people who really want to play it will also be better at reporting bugs and give constructive feedback.

It's always a risky thing for a developer to draw too much attention to a game in early alpha. People check it out, get frustrated when it isn't done as much as they like, put it aside. Eventually the game comes out for real, but all the excitement has already been soured by their prior experience with the unfinished version of the game.

Obviously that's not always the case. If you go into things with realistic expectations you'll probably be just fine. Most people just aren't really looking for the alpha (i.e. buggy, unfinished, unbalanced) experience.

That said, after watching the quick look, I'm on board. Is $30 too much for the average consumer these days? Maybe. I'm a bad judge of that, as I'm a person with more expendable income than sense.

@jaqen_hghar: $30 bucks is saying this game has, or will have half as much content as a same-genre AAA game. They are at about a quarter at this point. The ""only" get people who really want to play this" line is laughable, really. I can guarantee you that bug-squashing has nothing to do with it. I don't see how pricing people out of it, like-me, helps the bug situation in any respect. The reason Minecraft did so well is because they actually had a reduced price in early stages because they saw the value in it, bugs were squashed and it garnered immense popularity, it managed to get to its potential.

Bought it midway through the quick look, really love the idea and execution of the game, only problem I've come across in the few hours I've played are the utilities and a few bugs now and again. Stupid utilities are ruining my prison

I keep having people die and clutter up the place. I don't know how to move the corpses.

The 30 dollar for an alpha thing killed it for me. 20 bucks maybe. 15 would have been a deal. But 30 put me off even know I love the idea.

@the_laughing_man:

It's 30 dollars for the full game though, not just the Alpha phase.
So when it's finally done at some point you have the full game. It's like a pre-order only you get to play the buggy mess instead of just knowing you paid for something that might not happen.

But the current state of the game does in no way garner enough interest (for me at least) to put down a pre-order at $30. Compared to something like what Don't Starve presented during beta and their price-point it's just ridicolous.

And that's fine, people just keep making it sound like they think they're only getting the Alpha version when they pay money for it.
It garnered enough interest for me to plop down "a lot" more than 30(not really a lot, I only paid 50), but that's because introversion have always made games I enjoyed so I gave this a shot and it hasn't disappointed me so far.
It's not feature complete yet(As in, it's in Alpha) and I know what that means for a game so bugs and stuff are to be expected.

And again, it was only 50 for me so pretty much peanuts really.
Already gotten more out of the game (before it was on steam) that I have with other "OMG BBQ AWESOMESAUCE "TRIPLE GAJILLION A"-titles that cost more than $50.

I found out about this on October 2nd last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TZT9kO--fQ

Price seemed kind of ridiculous, but looked moderately interesting aside from that. Any type of long distance management/strategy game winds up having a pretty similar flavor and this is no exception so why buy a new one when I could just play Sim City or Civ 3 or RoTK IX or Gal Civ or Crusader Kings or Victoria or Europa Universalis 3; I realize the construct itself is different but it's basically the same idea just modified a bunch.

@zeforgotten: might be peanuts for you but sadly right now I am a bit tight on money. I would love the game and if I had the extra 30 id get it but I do not.

I only have Last Light cause I traded in a bunch of games.

@the_laughing_man: Oh yeah yeah, It's peanuts for me.
Not saying that "oh man, everyone should have 30 bucks to just throw away" or anything like that.

Besides, the game is not going anywhere, so once you have 30 bucks to spend on it, if you still want to at that point, then you can do just that.
It's just you sounded like you thought you only got the Alpha for 30 bucks and not the whole game when it's released, that's what kinda threw me off :P

@zeforgotten: I knew you would get the full game. But stuff like minecraft and don't starve charged WAY less for their games.

But ya I would love to have this game. Really really want it but 30 bucks for something this early is annoying.

@killerclaw:

Even so, that is the stated reason I have seen several places. It is also why they are going to lower the price once it is released, so the full game will not cost 30$.

So if you don't think it seems worth it at this point, then don't buy it. Instead buy it when it is finished, for less than 30$. I bought it earlier because I liked what I saw, I wanted to help the development and I am invested enough in wanting this to be enjoyable that I will send bug reports if I find any. Win-win I'd say.
This is also close to how most Kickstarters are. If you pay the base cost you normally just get the finished game. Pay more and you get access to the Beta etc.

@ares42: @the_laughing_man: If you think 30$ is too expensive, then wait. It will drop in price once it is released. As stated above.

Just watched the QL and wanted to buy this but 30$ is just to much, hope they pull a War Z and just drop it to 10-15. But this situation is always bad with people having already paid 30.
Im sure if you get into it this game will easy be worth it, but just cant help thinking paid this for SC2 HOTS and only 10$ more and I got a triple A on pc.
Also just dont understand it, I know Introversion got one hell of a rep but this just got the art of a 3$ mobile game. Making this 10$ will sell 10x times the units and probably make it this years FTL.

I can understand where a lot of people are coming from with the whole "$30 seems pricey" idea. With the age of games that we live in, particularly PC gaming where you can buy games on the super cheaps regularly, $30 for an indie game seems crazy.

Personally, I'm a strong supporter of both indie development as well as Introversion specifically. Uplink, Defcon, and Darwinia are some precious pieces of game-making to me. In turn, I have no problem with dropping $30 on a game (even in alpha) from a company that doesn't deliver bad product.

I do not have a extra 30 bucks right now. Sadly I would love to have the game but right now its a little much.

I'd recommend people to stay very, very far away from this game until it becomes more stable, unless you are genuinely interested in being an alpha tester. The game is just too unstable as it is. Maybe I have had a uniquely negative experience, but designating rooms (which is the majority of what you will be doing) is too buggy as it is.