In Alpha9 of Prison Architect, your prisoners can start repaying their debt with the new Prisoner Employment system. With the help of a few new rooms, they can now do menial jobs such as the laundry, cooking and cleaning and even make your prison some money in the workshop. Family visitation is finally here, providing your criminals with a way to see their family, or even lawyers.
Spiritual successor to side-on Minecraft-alike Terraria Starbound opened its doors to pre-orders not two days ago and it has already raised $200,000 from sales to early adopters. Opting for a tiered pre-order system, much like Prison Architect’s, you are able to buy a copy of the game (and access into its beta) for as little as $15 or, for added trinkets, as much as $2,000.
A new update for the Prison Architect alpha has just been released and it makes some quite important changes to the game. Most significantly, only guards are now able to open locked doors, meaning they now spend much more of their time as gatekeepers, granting or denying access to prisoners who previously "went through [these] doors as if they were supermarket doors," Introversion say.
Two new emergency options have also been introduced. Lockdown immediately closes all doors everywhere in the prison, something you'll want to activate if a breakout attempt is underway, while Bang Up orders all prisoners to return to their cells immediately. It's exactly what you need when a fight is breaking out and if you see prisoners disobeying, then... well, you know what to do.
Click through for a complete rundown of the changes, including graphics updates. There's also a video that, quite accidentally, shows off the shotgun(!).
Prison
Architect, the prison management game from indie darlings Introversion,
might still be in closed alpha, but that hasn’t prevented over 32,000
sales of the game, raising in excess of of a million dollars for its
developers. Crikey. Then again, Prison Architect made over $100,000 in just 36 hours, so this is a game that had a heck of a head start.Our Spotlight units plug content our journalists have made, that our advertisers want to promote. Sometimes the promotion is paid for, but the content they go to is always independent with no client oversight or approval.
Introversion have updated their prisons in a manner the state could only dream of: by reaching inside their inmates, jiggling around a bit and changing their nature. The changes go deep - “in fact we’ve probably totally broken the game", note devs Chris and Mark - but also provide a bit more clarity as to who’s likely to shank who.Prison Architect's alpha is coming along nicely, the latest update lets you say no to prisoners - a vital part of prison management. Yup, you can now designate exclusion zones where your convicts aren't allowed to go unless they want to feel the warm embrace of a guard's nightstick.
Introversion are steaming ahead with the development of their management sim, Prison Architect: last week they added a new fog of war system that blanked out parts of the prison that weren't under observation by guards or CCTV. Though in a response to feedback about the new system, which, in a video update, lead designer Chris Delay recognises makes placing objects "like you're doing keyhole surgery", Introversion have released a new version of the system, which removes the problem but still keeps all the functionality of the original release. Taking just over a week to develop it.
Microsoft and Sony can "piss off" if they think they're getting the first bite of Introversion's indie apple, slammed co-founder Mark Morris. Speaking to VG247, the indie dev slammed the prohibitive development costs of creating games for consoles, as well as the diminishing returns of exclusive content deals with platform holders. Slam slam slam.
People really like prisons. More so than science ever thought possible. In just four weeks Prison Architect has earned developer Introversion a cool $361,780 in revenue. That's 10,172 sales, according to the copious sales data the indie dev is freely publishing for all to see. The Dwarf Fortress meets Dungeon Keeper meets Prison Break gaol-builder is still in alpha, operating on a Kickstarter-styled tier system, with Introversion busily working on the next major update. Here's our Prison Architect preview, if you'd like to know what all the commotion is about.
On Wednesday, Introversion launched their latest game, Prison Architect, as an alpha, allowing their die hard fans to get access to the game and have a pivotal role in the development of the game. Since then, in just 36 or so short hours, they’ve sold over a thousand copies of the game, along with raising nearly $100,000 in the process. 
My first prison ran out of money before I bought any guards, leaving my first prisoners milling about in the parking lot shackled and alone. Second try ended when I forgot to build any walls and five of them ran away before I locked all the doors. The third attempt was a little more successful until my cooks couldn’t cook bacon fast enough and a riot broke out in the canteen, ending with three prisoners dead and a pair of guards spluttering their last over some overcooked eggs. I’ve come to realise I should never be put in charge of anyone, let alone an entire prison of violent angry inmates. Prison Architect is now in alpha, and I’m terrible at it.
Right now, in the dark recesses of the internet, there’s a light that just went on. It’s the first spark of the first flare of the Prison Architect alpha program, allowing you to finally find out what Introversion have been spending all this time doing. 
Ahead of their "big announcement" tomorrow at 4pm UK time, Introversion Software have released time-lapse footage of artist Ryan Sumo "digitally immorto-criminalising" his face to demonstrate how individual prisoner sprites and mugshots can be designed. Click through to see some cool image manipulation skills.
If you dream of managing little captives, structuring their basic needs, and encouraging them not to knife each other to death faster than anyone can say "He's wearing a wire", then you have less than 90 days to wait before you can adopt the role of a prison warden in Introversion's Prison Architect. If you can't wait that long, my old primary school in Birmingham's looking for a new head teacher.
Windows 8 is a problem: in it rush to create a tablet experience, Microsoft are pushing to certify and distribute apps and games through the inbuilt Microsoft store. Developers around the world are starting to understand the implications of Microsoft’s plans, and they’re not happy. We asked Introversion’s Chris Delay what he thought of the implications and process. Introversion, currently working on the wonderful Prison Architect, have experience with working with Microsoft through Xbox Live Arcade.
