The announcement of Prison Architect 2 was a pleasant surprise. The original game was an interesting strategy game about, well, designing and running a prison.
Depending on how you played it, it could have been really silly or really heavy, but above all it was complex, engaging, and heavy on the planning.
The sequel does seem to go for the exact same thing, but it also decided to lift the original cartoonish 2D designs into the third dimension, and if the trailers are any indication, it made the leap gracefully. Going 3D didn’t harm the cartoonish aesthetic at all, and clearly allowed for more nuanced and complex construction projects, in addition to enabling more immersive inspections of the facility.
Of course, graphics aren’t the only promised upgrade. For example, the prisoner AI and the nitty-gritty of management appear to have received a boost. It remains to be seen if it can rival the wealth of content created for the predecessor over its lifetime, however.
You won’t need to wait long to see for yourself, at least, as Prison Architect 2 will be released from the pre-launch arrest on March 26th, 2024, just a little under two months from now.