Prison Tycoon

I think there should be a movement of gamers. A movement of gamers to unilaterally ban ValuSoft, and prevent it from making any more games, ever. Ever since their inception as a company that is obviously dedicated to making crappy games for pennies (Thus their name), ValuSoft has not done a single game that can be described as exemplary, let alone playable. Instead, you see them lurk around the bargain bins of Video Game stores (Generally in Wal*Mart or something), begging you to play what looks like an intriguing title.

But it isn't.

Prison Tycoon is one of those games. Obviously, developed by ValuSoft, Prison Tycoon is all about making a prison empire. I'm not kidding- the whole purpose of the game is to build a prison and maintain it by preventing prisoner fights and attempts to escape. By building up your reputation, you can slowly but surely gain “better” (Higher security) prisoners with more danger added to them, and attempt to become the best prison in the world.




Okay, look here. One of my relatives works in a prison. And I've never talked to her, primarily because she is crazy. By using this logic, anyone who works in a prison is crazy (Note: Actually, this has some basis to it, as I know a few people who have worked in a prison before). I have NEVER heard someone go “I want to work in a prison as my job!”, and there is a reason for that: It sucks. But, for some reason, ValuSoft is convinced that working in a prison is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and wants to sell you a twenty dollar game to prove it.

Unfortunately, this review is going to be somewhat smaller than my usual review for two reasons- one, this game is shallow like a puddle on the street, and two, I could not stand this game for longer than about thirty minutes. The whole of Prison Tycoon is built a lot like other _____ Tycoon games, where your whole purpose is to build up, but being a prison inevitably means that there isn't that much to do. Build a place for the prisoners to sleep. Build beds. Build an office. Build a cafeteria. Add stuff. You're done!

And that's essentially all to this game. To somewhat augment this, Prison Tycoon features a rather rudimentary system to manage the actual people in the prison (be they guards/staff or the prisoners themselves) and prevent them from running all over the place. This is somewhat boring, because all it requires is that you pick a character up and move him wherever needed. Prisoners might have a fight, but I noticed with the right “Incentives” (That is, when I flooded my jail with guards), they won't do crap.

The graphics and overall presentation of Prison Tycoon just further the notion that this game was made with $10. First off, the graphics are absolutely mediocre, the only quality setting you can set is to turn on or off various 2D trees littered in the background. Everything in the game appears to have been made for the Playstation, and has that kind of messy-muddy texture setup to them to make it look as bad as possible. The characters can barely be distinguished from one another sans little suits they wear, and the only kind of activity they seem to do always ends up being like a three frame animation. To top this off, the only music you get is stereotypical southern-banjo-rock music that they seemingly got from “Joe's MIDI shack”, which just managed to infuriate me more and more.

One of the big killers of this game is the play length, which tends to be in the range of ten minutes. Even though it has some rather unique mission objectives, Prison Tycoon's actual core gameplay lacks in every facet to the point that, unlike other god games, you are left thinking “Why am I even bothering?”. Obviously, because prison is meant to suck (Unless you're a big-name businessman, in which it looks quite a bit like a Holiday Inn with bars), Prison Tycoon just rolls around in it's own filth at times. Sometimes, the game got so bad that I almost fell asleep in my nice plush chair- which is something like 2 in the list of the 7 great gaming sins.




Prison Tycoon was made in two seconds, and I know this for a few reasons. First off, it was obvious that this game was not made with any graphical thoughts in mind, which is why it looks absolutely horrible. Secondly, the GUI was made by a two year old, thus evidenced by “Mystery Meat Navigation” where you don't know what the button you click on means. Finally, the whole game wraps things up by being about running a prison, which inevitably means that watching “The Price is Right” while on heavy medication is more entertaining than this (I'm still scared of Bob Barker).

Prison Tycoon isn't absolutely horrible, and if you have an old system with nothing better to do, I could see, in some alternate-universe-with-meteors-falling-from-the-sky, getting this game. Some people with very bad taste could be somewhat amused by the similarity to more expensive and better titles, and it definitely beats other ValuSoft titles like “Care Bears: Catch a Star!”. In the long run, though, this is like saying a car with no engine or no wheels is nice because it still has paint on the rusted body. I think one star somewhat fits this game, just because I'm feeling amicable today.

1 star(s) out of 5

Discuss More PC Games More Strategy Games