Prison Architect is a detailed management game that could have a more user-friendly interface. A variety of reports gives information in the prison. Each inmate has numerous needs, such as food, hygiene, exercise, family, and recreation, that are met by adjusting the daily routine and constructing the appropriate rooms. Personnel can be hired to run the jail, from guards to psychologists to janitors, with additional options unlocked through research.
Various rooms have electricity and water demands that must be met, and staff-only areas can be defined. You will have to ensure that they have an constant supply of oxygen, food and water to stay alive. In the game you play the role of the base architect and manager, telling your colonists where to build the structures they will need to survive. The interface does allow for planning before construction begins, but the inability to add text to a plan is a notable omission. Planetbase is a strategy game where you guide a group of space settlers trying to establish an outpost in a remote planet. Prisons are laid out by placing foundations, walls, doors and objects, then designating rooms (offices, cells, kitchen, canteen, yard, shower, infirmary, and lots more). The game features an open sandbox mode (with optional, money-based objectives), a story mode that serves as an extended tutorial, and an escape mode that allows players to break out of others’ prisons. Beyond Sol is a unique, though not completely satisfying, marriage of grand strategy and top-down action gameplay mechanics. Each star system contains several AI factions that must be dealt with, but diplomatic options are very basic. Frequent, though repetitive, random events offer resources or battles against pirates. Empire strength escalation is relatively easy to attain as long as resources are dedicated in the right directions. Resources can also be spent recruiting intelligent wingmen or improving the ships. The base city can be expanded by placing and upgrading buildings, while the empire territory is grown by constructing stations for mining or defense each structure has specific monetary and resource requirements. The interface uses the mouse for movement (right-click to change facing, middle mouse for thrusters, left-click to target) and the keyboard to activate abilities of the capital ship: a low precision, somewhat awkward scheme.
Featuring both single-player and online gameplay, victory conditions include reacting economic, military, or diplomatic dominance in the galaxy.