Prison Architect Alpha 17 protected by armed guards

This is not what you want to happen.

The latest Prison Architect alpha has hit, and this one adds in two big new features: armed guards, and the Forestry.

Armed guards require you to build an Armoury equipped with guard lockers and weapon racks. Once that’s done, you can start popping them down all over your prison, at which point they will massively intimidate nearby prisoners. They will not fire, however, unless either their lives are in danger or you give them explicit permission by clicking the Weapons Free button. Even then, they’ll usually warn prisoners before blowing them away.

The downside to this is that if a riot does kick off, your more violent prisoners are probably going to make a beeline for the Armoury. If they get in there, you suddenly have rioters with shotguns and pistols to deal with. Not good.

The other big new feature is the Forestry, which lets you zone an area of ground in which trees can be planted. When fully grown, the trees will be cut down and the logs will be shipped to the workshop, where you can turn them into cold, hard cash. And to think I was always taught that money doesn’t grow on trees.

As ever, there’s a nice big video with Prison Architect developers Mark Morris and Chris Delay talking through all the features and showing them off. You can see it below.