A new Prison Architect DLC turns the building and management sim into a Walking Dead-style horror game thanks to the addition of gore, zombies, and a sinister virus, as publisher Paradox and developer Double Eleven gear up for Halloween.
The upcoming Prison Architect expansion, Undead, turns managing your jail into a brutal fight for survival as a fast-acting contagion sweeps across your inmates, transforming them into flesh-eating monsters. Remember series 3 and 4 of The Walking Dead, where they’re all in the prison? It’s basically that, as you try to fight off the infected and keep as many of your staff and prisoners alive as possible.
There are multiple ways your inmates can get infected. Either they can become sick from the virus, and gradually turn into a zombie over a period of hours; they can lose their battle against the horde, get bitten, and turn; or there’s a new area, the Graveyard, where occasionally zombies will spawn out of the ground, demanding you do everything you can to contain them before they reach the general population.
As you might imagine, zombies don’t listen to your guards or warden, so you can’t order them into cells or settle them down in any way other than caving their heads in with Undead’s new weapons – which naturally include a chainsaw. On the other hand, your living prisoners will join sides with the guards against the greater, decomposing threat, meaning you have a better chance of taking the zombies down.
There are new traps and techniques, like using a bait called “undead chum” to lure zombies into certain zones, and if things get desperate, there’s an additional emergency service in the form of bounty hunters, who will show up at your jail to join the fight against your zombified ex-cons. There’s also a new, optional visual overlay, if you want to make the whole of Prison Architect look that much more eerie. The Undead DLC arrives October 11, though you can wishlist it on Steam now.
As spooky season rolls on, you might want to try out some of the other best zombie games, or maybe, if you fancy a challenge, some great survival games instead. We also have a comprehensive guide to the best Halloween games, if you’re planning a late night in on October 31.