Happily working my way through the great Prison Architect "tutorials" which are essentially the games story mode, I thought I was doing well until I noticed my prisoner population was a bit low. I had not been paying close attention to the wing where my armed guards were merrily going about their guarding business, seemingly keeping everything orderly, as I had important business building a laundry.

Sadly I only noticed the dead prisoners thanks to my "positive cash flow" ToDo list marker not being met. Luckily I did finish the Laundry though.

Really loving this game so far and looking forward to starting my first self made prison from the ground up. Will try to document that in some way on this blog here! Hopefully it will be a bit less of a blood bath.

@williamr:I fucking love this game dude. Been wanting to talk to someone about it for a long time. Its one of the games I would say really used "early access" best. The developers are constantly adding to the game and making tangible improvements to the game on an almost monthly basis. I started playing 2+ years ago and its been a joy watching this game grow. Its really good too, I can't say enough cool things about it. Have you played this game much since your post?

I really want to get into Prison Architect but i'm struggling. Unlike pretty much every city builder out there it seems you have to build most of the city (prison in this case) before doing anything. I end up starting a game, spend ages building a small prison with all the necessary amenities then I've ran out of steam before any of the prisoners move in. It seems so counter-intuitive to how these games normally are.

Anyone got any tips?

@picky_bugger: Pause the game. Loan money. Get grants. Plan out your entire prison but only build the bare necessities for now. Build whatever is needed to get the grants. Get a workshop and start churning out those number plates. Profit.

It is definitely one of the better uses of Early Access that I've seen on Steam. This type of game is extremely well suited to layering in new mechanics and adding content over time, and the developers were extremely consistent in delivering updates.

@picky_bugger: check off the dev/cheat mode when making a new prison. Their last update added that feature. It allows you to build the buildings a lot faster, plus other good stuff. Here is IVSoftware's video update on it:

http://youtu.be/UXrmp9F0uMY

Haha that is tragically awesome! Really reduces overhead.