You can expand and reduce rooms easily enough if you want to deviate from your initial plans. A very quick sketch of our starter prison. You're not a slave to the initial plans you set out here by any means, but taking a bit of time to sketch things out will definitely help. You can also highlight and delete any sections of the sketch that you want to discard, too. Instead of diving straight in and laying foundations, it's recommended that new architects make use of the Planning tool, allowing you to lay down a wall, designate an object's position, or set a pathway. If you'd like, you can even turn new arrivals on or off using the Prisoners section of the Reports system (accessed by clicking the clipboard in the bottom right-hand corner, or by pressing Up on the D-pad on console), but for this guide we'll assume the first inmates are coming in 24 hours. How to make money, use the planning tool and secure your prisonīefore doing anything else, pause the clock - by hitting the button at the top-right hand corner of the screen on PC, or by holding down Triangle / Y and then left on the D-pad on console - to buy you the breathing space you need to prepare for your first prisoners. Having eyes on all sections of your prison at all times certainly takes a chunk of challenge out of the game, but it also makes life much easier while you're getting to grips with the basics. We've left all of the starting conditions at their default settings, except for Fog of War which normally comes into play when your first prisoners arrive, but has been disabled. This should give you all the confidence you need to dig deeper into the game, expand the scope of your prison, and explore all of the many features that await more advanced architects.Ī quick note before we begin, however.

With that in mind, we've put together a simple guide that will help you get the most fundamental aspects of your first facility in place, so that you're ready to at least contain and care for your first batch of prisoners. When you first enter the sandbox, and find yourself staring at nothing more than a barren scratch of land while a timer ticks down towards your first arrivals, the whole experience can leave you feeling paralysed. While the game's opening mission does go some way towards introducing would-be wardens to the nitty-gritty details of establishing and maintaining their very own prison, quite a lot of critical detail is left out.

Prison architect rotate