I think it works in a very similar way with my mod, where you are receiving dozens of prisoners for egregious offenses, and still have to accommodate them and put them to work. This forced passivity in the face of injustice and cruelty is what I would actually see as one of the big strengths of PA. PA confronts the player with the reality of the prison system, while still urging to become a part of the game, to build the electric chair for the execution. Right in the tutorial, you are forced to witness the execution of a prisoner on death row. How much were you thinking about that clash?ĪpolloLV: I think that clash has intentionally been there for the entire game. Waypoint: Prison Architect has cute, cartoonish graphics, which seem to go against the idea of a gulag.
#PRISON ARCHITECT WIKI DEATH ROW MOD#
At that point, I thought: “Well, a concentration camp would take matters too far, since its only purpose is killing people.” But the game already had some prison labor system built in back then, so I thought: “Why not make a mod that focuses on this aspect of a prison?” After all, there have been many labor camps in many countries throughout the recent history, and so I arrived at the infamous gulag system of the USSR. There was some discussion about what themes would be appropriate, like having a concentration camp mod and stuff like that. Waypoint: Was there a specific moment this idea came into your head?ĪpolloLV: Actually, the first time I thought about it was when I was reading through the Prison Architect forums. To learn why someone would spend years on such a mod, I spoke with ApolloLV, a computer science student in Germany, who recently finished their bachelor’s degree. Turning the place into a gulag takes it one step further. Prison Architect is a goofy looking game, and its cartoonish art directly contributes to an abstraction of player actions-it becomes easy to focus on the numbers, instead of people.
#PRISON ARCHITECT WIKI DEATH ROW UPDATE#
The update before added Russian language protest signs. The most recent update, from last November, changed the assault rifles carried by guards to look more like period-appropriate AK-47s. Slowly, ApolloLV-who doesn't even play many games, let alone create mods-has tweaked various aspects. Modder ApolloLV published the first version of their mod in 2014, when the game was still in alpha.