In Prison Empire Tycoon, you become a fledgling warden, ready to renovate, upgrade and manage your first site, Malamadre Prison. Here is how to organize your spendings, manage your workforce, and what to be made aware of.
What to expect
This tycoon game is unlike any other, as you will be encouraged to balance your attention to more things than simply investing in things to make more money. In Prison Empire Tycoon, you will receive money as prisoners enter, and as they leave through rehabilitation. Your main income, however, will come from their stay. Every in-game hour, you will profit off the state of the cells each prisoner is staying in. You will have to upgrade individual aspects of each cell to earn more money from each head, such as upgrading their beds, their radios, to even the lights or boxing bags. Each different prison you will go on to manage will be vastly different in terms of cell furnishings, however the basic principle will stay the same. The better the cell, the more money you gain.
However, You can not be solely focused on upgrading their cells, as you will have a multitude of other departments to upgrade to maintain the prisoner’s satisfaction, through good food, health, entertainment, security, hygiene, and comfortability. So keeping the showers, canteen, courtyard, and other such areas well equipped is important.
Your progression through Prison Empire Tycoon won’t be dependant on how much money you make, but how many prisoners you rehabilitate, as the higher your rehabilitation score, the more challenging prisons you unlock.
How to build the prison
So, with that in mind, how would you go about building the prison, to manage profit and prisoner satisfaction?
Firstly, the prisoner’s cells do not only serve to increase your profits, but they can also increase a few of the prisoner’s satisfaction levels through a comfortable bed and clean toilet, so prioritizing their cells from the get-go will increase your profits whilst also making the prisoners happy. If possible, upgrade evenly and as much as you can. The more profits you make, the quicker you can upgrade the rest of the prison and the more staff you can hire.
Once the cells are about half way upgraded, as indicated through the bar above each cell’s menu, I would start to look elsewhere. Do not build new cells yet, as tempting as it may be. You must check these things first before you build any new cell at any point in the game:
- Can my kitchen provide enough servings for my prisoners?
- Are my janitors managing to clean the prison?
- Are there enough showers for my prisoners?
- Are there enough activities in my yard for each prisoner?
You may want to check these things regularly even whilst upgrading the cells. If these factors falter, then you’ll have a riot on your hands in no time. If your guards cannot contain the riot, then a special team will extract the prisoners. You will not get paid for the departure of rioting prisoners, nor will you get paid upfront for their replacements. Additionally, you will have to hire new guards, so making sure you meet those requirements is paramount.
The kitchen is one of the most important things on that list, so make sure that, firstly, there are enough servings and, secondly, that the food is healthy. Prisoners eating the food can dramatically increase two of their satisfaction levels, so prioritize the kitchen if their moods start to drop.
Hygiene is also problematic to control. You need enough showers and to have a clean prison to keep this up, and even then, exercise in the yard will drop their hygiene. I would make sure the janitors have adequate cleaning supplies in the maintenance room, and that each prisoner has access to a shower. Don’t waste too much money on sinks and toilets, they hardly increase the hygiene.
With the yard, at the early stages, don’t worry about upgrading things, just build new activities for all of the prisoners to be occupied.
I would heavily suggest that, for the first prison, you only build a new cell when all of you previous cells have been fully upgraded. That way, your revenue can support the new mouths to feed and bodies to wash, and you can support a larger number of workers to keep up with the demands.
How to manage the workforce
There are four types of staff available to you in the first prison, builders, guards, cooks, and janitors.
Builders are purely for your own convenience, allowing you to build things faster. Early in the game, there is no need to worry about this, so don’t waste money hiring more.
Guards are responsible for bringing new prisoners in and showing prisoners out, as well as enforcing order if a riot sparks. I would suggest, for a safe and efficient prison, having around at least half of your prisoner’s worth in guards. So each guard will only have to battle two prisoners between them, which should be a feasible task. If you are tight for money, and your prisoners are satisfied, then you can get away with only a quarter of your prisoner’s worth in guards, as long as you invest in the guard’s room to prepare them for potential combat down the line.
Cooks will prepare and deliver food to your prisoners. As long as you can see the cooks managing to prepare enough servings, then you won’t have to worry about the number of cooks. Just don’t buy a whole bunch of cooking stoves for only two cooks!
Janitors clean the prison. This is imperative for maintaining a high hygiene rating for the prisoners. They will also sort out the laundry when you construct the laundry building. A messy prison is a constant battle, so the number of janitors really is subjective to your observation of your prison’s cleanliness. I would try to upgrade the maintenance room first before hiring new people.
So, there you have it, an in-depth guide of everything you need to know before starting your journey in Prison Empire Tycoon. Interested in the game? You download it on the Apple Store and Google Play.
If you like tycoon games, you can check out my beginner’s guide of Overcrowded Tycoon.
