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Saw Scant Redemption: Prison Architect's Fixed Fog

Pretty much the type of comment I hate most here is "shame on you RPS for not posting about game/event x". No, shame on you for being a plonker. But this time and this time only you are allowed to say "shame on you" to me. Why? Because I still haven't played Introversion's Prison Architect, even though I have a copy of the alpha.

Shame on me.

I do intend to correct this very soon though, and fortunately I'll be going into a newly-updated build which corrects the notorious fog of war issue.

Clearly I'm having to summarise rather than speak from experience here, but sounds as though a full-on fog of war system that entailed not being able to see what was going on in much of your prison half the time was somewhat interfering with the whole being in charge of a prison thing, as well as, more practically speaking, preventing players from easily building stuff. In developers Introversion's own words, " Somehow we managed to introduce a element that wrecked the core game play."

They've now gone for a new tack, wherein you lose some rather than all visibility in areas of the prison that aren't directly monitored by your guards. You can now see layout and furniture, but not prisoner activity. Unwatched areas are also now rendered in greyscale, which I imagine would add to the 'oh God what on Earth is going on in there' tension.

Far more details are on the Introversion blog, and here's a video of the new fog system in action, together with the other new bits and bobs in alpha build 4 of the game.

Watch on YouTube

You can preorder Prison Architect for immediate access to an alpha build now. I am finally going to play it myself tomorrow, at which point your right to say "shame on you" to me will be rescinded.

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