Prison Architect

Hellllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Gamers!

Are you reaaaaaaadaaayyyyyy?

Today is the day I talk about Prison Architect!!!!!

Now you may wonder why it’s called Prison Architect, well you’d be right to ask!

Prison Architect is a very fun, very complex game about what it would be like to run a prison. You are in charge of designing your prison, hiring staff, making sure prisoners are fed by hiring cooks, make sure they can shower, and sleep, and have free time, and the list goes on and on.

You literally get dropped out in the middle of nowhere, with eight workers, and some supplies to begin your journey to becoming the greatest prison owner/operator your prisoners have ever known.

You can get grants for completing little tasks, which I’d highly recommend for beginning a new game, as some grants give you up to thirty thousand dollars! These tasks are pretty easy, too. The “administration” grant just says to hire a warden, research finance and psychology, and have two office rooms. It’s not a lot, trust me. Others might include building a med centre, or a kitchen.

Once you begin, I’d recommend getting an office built first, with the exception of some paving stone so that your workers can move faster getting to where they need to be.

After creating your first office, hire a warden to research whatever you need.

Build then a utilities room for power and water, making a kitchen and canteen, and a holding cell for incoming prisoners.

Once that is done, you can build showers, or start off on building your cells.

In this game, as it is in FTL, the pause button is your life, use it.

Plan out lots of things ahead of time, so that no time is wasted, you want to have your prisoners be happy so they don’t revolt against you.

My policy on prison guards is having as many as you need, no more. This is usually about ten for your first 16 prisoners. Prisoners will arrive every twenty-four hours, and they come in eights. You can of course elect to stop the receiving of prisoners, given that you didn’t click the “continuous prisoners” box in the beginning.  

Once you have a few prisoners, I’d recommend lengthening the free time in exchange for fewer lockups, I think this will make the prisoners more happy but I haven’t absolutely cheeked that fact.

I've also found that once you have the basic tier one workers researched you can research grounds keeping and janitors that will really help your prison look better. You can assign prisoners to do this job, once you've researched the “prison labor” box.

Don’t forget to build a staff room for your workers who get tired, they don’t have to be big as only about three or four get tired at a time (given  your prison is small). Workers such as your warden will not research anything if tired.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to try different layouts, make your prison unique.

We’ll see ya later Gamers

Resistance is Futile

Word Count: 507

Universe Sandbox

Hello Gamers!

Today I’ll be giving you my thoughts on Universe Sandbox.

This is a little physics game about space and astronomical bodies and such that is really fun to dick about with. Have you ever wondered what it would look like if the earth was three times its normal size compared to the moon? Or if the sun would just go away to see what all other planets would do? Or whatever your brain thinks of? Well this is the game for you.

This game allows you to do so many wonderful things with… well anything you can think of. You can adjust gravity, time, size, weight, orbit time- basically whatever it takes to destroy pluto in funny ways!

Nothing can compare to the sheer size of this game, there are so many different simulations to open up. Some examples are

Earth and Moon

Solar System

Death Star orbiting Endor

Distant Stars

And some that are just for fun simulations

Tea cups in space

Size ratios

And I’m sure there are more to come, because the game offers a simulation creator, in which you can do everything you could before, but you now have a blank canvas to go all Picasso on (or Van Gogh, if ya like that sort of thing).

Universal Sandbox is on steam, and I think I picked it up for about ten dollars, like many of their good games are, if you’re just looking for the cheap entertainment of once in a while dicking about.

I’d highly recommend this game to friends, and really anyone who likes realistic physics and space games, where you can do the things you’ve always wondered about.

I think I’ve talked about this game enough, and if you’re not convinced (and I think I’m going to do this quite often from now on, link a great YouTuber I follow *and you should, too) to help me show how great this game is.

Resistance is Futile

Word Count: 329 

Battlefront II

Hello Gamers!

Today, Battlefront II. 

This was absolutely my childhood pastime; it was battlefront every snow day, every weekend, and every rainy summer day when my friends would come over to play inside. 

And I hope you go pick it up (it's only like ten dollars on steam) and experience it for yourself- if not for me, than for yourself.

After my PS2 could no longer read video games, I moved on to the Wii, along with came other games that I will also review in the future (such as the Lego Star Wars series, various Mario games, and possibly others I can’t remember now) when I get to it.

If there was ever a game that you needed no previous background in gaming, and Star Wars, I think this was it. You don’t even need to know any of the species, just how to aim a blaster and throw grenades.

The game does get a bit wonky in voiceovers- even on steam, when playing, in the middle of a sentence the game sometimes repeats parts, and sometimes the audio is a bit fuzzy, but the gameplay is the most solid I’ve ever seen in a game from that era.

The game is also very inclusive about the timeline of Star Wars, and what I mean is, it takes us from the beginning of the Clone Wars, to the battle of battle of Yavin 4, to the construction of the second Death Star. I really enjoy the story telling, the perspective of the 501^st, and what it was like for them. All too often we hear about the Jedis’ perspective  of the war, but never the Clones.

The game also has great bonus features for after you beat the main story in their “Galactic Conquest”, where you can choose your preferred time period, and team for that matter. You can choose to be CIS or Republic during the Clone Wars, or you can fight the Empire as the Rebellion. Your objective, like the name suggests, is to capture all enemy planets in the Galaxy, and to destroy (or fend off invading) ships of the enemy’s fleet. Once you do this, you’re done and can move onto other campaigns, or instant actions, or XY&Z.

The point is, you have so much freedom in this game, which is why I picked it up on Steam once the idea came to me, and it is by far the best ten dollars I’ve spent there.

See ya ‘round Gamers

Resistance is Futile

Word Count: 421