After several years of tinkering, tweaking, and video series updating, Prison Architect has finally launched its version 2.0—the 45th and final amendment to Introversion’s jail management sim.
To mark the occasion, producer Mark Morris and designer Chris Delay recorded a typically jovial send-off diary and explained that, as this is their ultimate video, developer tools and cheats—seen featured in a few of their alpha videos—are now available to everyone.
“The world found time to have two rounds of Olympics; Usain Bolt won six gold medals in the time it took us to do Prison Architect,” says Delay in the dev diary below. Morris intervenes: “But I reckon the International Olympic Committee probably look at us and go: ‘Those Prison Architect guys, they made Prison Architect in the time it took us to host two games!’”
Once triggered, Prison Architect’s cheat mode allows construction to occur immediately; it adds a new ‘Spawn’ toolbar that permits instant creation of objects for zero cost; water can be placed like any other building material; and research in the bureaucracy screen can be sped up at the player’s discretion, among a range of other unscrupulous undertakings. It’s worth noting that cheat prisons can’t qualify for achievement unlocks and also can’t be sold on for profit.
Function keys can now perform debug services, behaviours settings can be altered, and the game’s modding system has also been bolstered. All of that, plus an extensive list of bug fixes, can be found this-a-way.
Introversion will still be at hand to provide support moving forward, however instilling players with the ability to cheat feels like a fitting way for the studio to part ways its prison management sim.
While the previous update suggested the developer’s next project will be either first-person cave explorer Scanner Sombre or bomb defusal game Wrong Wire—the above video appears to point to the former.
