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

FTL:Faster Than Light

Hello Gamers!

Today (again, as promised,) I will be talking about FTL: Faster Than Light

This game… I have to say... Is sweet… I’ve spent hours on this game, and every minute has been great. The graphics make the game look like a cross between an old Nintendo arcade games, mixed with modern 1080p. What sets this game apart from so many others, is that there really is no plot- no set characters, ship names, and you have the freedom to go wherever you want to go within the confines of the map.

I did kind of lie about the plot, there is one. Your ship carries vital information that the Federation needs, but beyond that and your goal of reaching federation space- the game is endlessly open world.

Even the leveling system is unlike so many others, which all require grinding hours and hours to get to the next “level”. In this game however, you simply buy upgrades. And unlike Cookie Clicker, the prices do not go up exponentially.

Another thing that I like about this game is the crew. You can rename them to be whatever you want, place them at any station on your ship, and kill them if you so choose. It’s a weird crew system that I haven’t seen before.

The game is also unique in its ship control system. If say your ship is above a star, and a solar flare starts a fire on your ship, you can put it out in two different ways. One way is to send a person in to extinguish by hand. What I do (and I hope you do as well) is to activate the doors leading to space and all doors until you reach the fire. This will on the down side deplete your oxygen in those rooms, but it regenerates pretty fast (based on how much you’ve leveled up your oxygen room). Your ship also uses fuel to travel, which is another perk that wasn’t in many space games I’ve ever played. You get fuel from stores, or from destroying enemy ships. If you do what I do, you don’t go to the stores for fuel, just repairs to your ship, and rely to get all of your fuel from distressed and enemy ships.

When you destroy an enemy’s vessel (or in the occasion that they surrender to you) you could get fuel, money, parts, weapons, drones, or crewmembers, all of which are useful.

The game (as far as I know) doesn’t end, you simply keep going from sector to sector, but I’ve then again only made it to the first boss, perfecting my play/ upgrade priorities to create a ship that can beat the boss.

That’s it for this one gamers, write me back if there’s a game you would like me to review, otherwise catch ya next time

Resistance is Futile

Word Count: 481

Steam sale!

Hello Gamers!

I know it's kind of late, and it's already gone, but I'd like to talk about the sale Steam just had for new year’s. 

It was phenomenal!

60% off here 80% off there!

I bought some games that I'd never played before, and my favorite nostalgia filled game from childhood: Star WarsBattlefront II. So be expecting reviews on the following games:

Prison Architect: Where you design and micromanage a prison (or in my case just lose all of the prisoners because of lack of jail doors)

Just Cause II: Where you attempt to overthrow an evil government in Asia 

FTL: Faster Than Light: Where you decide to be a good person and die trying, or be a dick and die trying (either way, you die).

Well I know that one was short, but that's all I wanted to say so catch ya later Gamers

Resistance is Futile

Word Count: 152

Corporation Inc Strategy

Hello Gamers!

As promised I’m here today with my strategy guide to Corporation inc!

This will outline how to get started, how to arrange offices, workers, and how to become a millionaire in only a week!

First off, freeze the game by clicking the freeze button, then place down three offices, starting at your far left, these have to be placed wall to wall.

Secondly, hire four workers in the first office, get achievement.

Third, hire two IT guys, get achievement. If you start the game with bugged computers that your two IT guys can’t manage, start a new game because it’s not that bad from the start

At this point you should have enough money for another office, by the way you haven’t started the game yet, and you should still be on freeze mode.

Place another office *usually I like to place it down far enough away that I can put a bathroom between the two, to do this just click the bathroom to place without actually doing it to see how much space it takes, than finding a marker in the ground to guide off of to place your next office. You will now have exactly $2600 left, buy four supervisors and place in the office you’ve just placed than begin the game by selecting the freeze button to take it offline.

Wait until however long it takes to buy another office. You will get popups that tell you that you need to hire janitors; this will make your workers unhappy if there is a lot of rubbish accumulated. It’s really a matter of preference, I like to buy another office and hire workers well before my first janitor, but you can buy them if you wish, and I’d place them in the third office to your right, after the workers and the IT guys. NOTE: every office in this design has one type of worker stationed in it; don’t mix your workers into different offices. This will mess up everything I’m trying to tell you.

After your next office of workers, wait to buy another one, place it wall to wall with your second office of workers, hire the workers, and probably fill the other two IT positions, and then if you haven’t done so, hire all the janitors you need.

Here’s where the fun begins.

Buy two more offices, wall to wall taking up the rest of your horizontal space. Then hire TWO researchers, you can do more if you want, but it will be hard to keep up then. Save your money to hire four accountants in the unused office, pausing the game the millisecond you reach that worker to fill them in. You should next be researching the deluxe office, or at least nothing matters until then. When you buy the deluxe offices on all of your workers’ offices, also buy it for the Accountant’s office.

After you research the advanced office, buy that for all of the workers’ offices. Plan out your other office perks according to whomever is stationed there i.e. IT workshops only for IT offices and so on.

From here on, do whatever you like, if you follow this pattern of development and planning accordingly, you’ll be far richer than if you just sat there making one dollar a button push

I really enjoyed divulging my strategy for this game, and I think I will do more.

If you liked it too, tell me and I’ll definitely do more in the future

Resistance is Futile

Word Count: 589

Corporation inc Explained!

Hello Gamers!

I’m going to do something a little different today

I’m going to just talk about a game on many websites, although I play on Armor Games called Corporation inc.

This is a neat little game that is the business man’s dream of how to run for First Corporation. This means that you plot offices; decide which type of worker is in each office, how to specialize the office, and how to spend your budget which is given to you at the end of the day at midnight. The budget is more like a spreadsheet more than a budget, you’re not in control of it it’s more like a daily report of your spending and earnings as where a budget is a plan for your money before you spend it, not after.

There are several classes of worker that are available for hire.

I’ll talk about each one separately.

First- The worker. This class is kind of like how the title suggests, he pushes a button at your workplace that generates cash (starting out at one dollar/push)

Second- The I.T. guy. This class is your office repairman, he’ll go around fixing lightbulbs (which have no consequence that I’m aware of), computers (that over time will make your worker (or whomever sits there) unhappy because he/she can’t get work done), and will fix chairs (also makes the workers unhappy).

Now if you’re like me, you’re sitting there right now wondering “Leif, why should I give a horses’ butt if the workers aren’t happy, they’re just computers right?” Well sadly, there is a meter showing how happy your office is, and person to person the employees will actually work slower if not motivated. Silly right? Anyway back on to the review.

Third- The Janitor. They will come in during the night shift to clean up the office’s trash bins that are filled with the button pushing from your workforce, these guys are very important, trust me.

Fourth- The Supervisor. The supervisor's role is to beat money out of the workers, and research out of your researchers. They are very useful at the beginning of the game as you begin to earn money. Instead of (at the beginning) earning just dollars from your workers, by hiring four supervisors you help increase your income by sixfold, that slowly deflates back to one dollar, until another beating.

Fifth- The Researcher. His/her role is simple: uncover all bonuses that will help your office run more smoothly, he/she won't however earn any money, but if you think about it, they're making you upgrades that will make you money.

Sixth- el Contador (or accountant). The Accountant’s job is to put cents on every dollar you earn, if you have one Accountant, you will earn $1.05 on the “button click” (as is your way of income), and if you have more well the cents just multiply by however many accountants you have. Ex. Four accountants= $1.20

Finally- H.R. These people keep your office happy, and in my professional opinion they are the biggest waste of money. DON’T BUY THEM. I’ve done so many games without using them. You’re essentially buying workers who (if you’re doing your job right) you don’t need.

That does it for this blog, check back later, and I’ll post my very first Strategy guide for Corporation inc!

Resistance is futile

Word Count: 559