Hi,
This is the first time I've listened to a 3MA episode (I normally listen to Idle Thumbs and just figured out that for some reason the Idle Thumbs Networks RSS feed seems to update several hours before the Idle Thumbs Show RSS does). Anyway, saw this episode and since I play / backed the game, I though I'd give it a listen.
First, that was a really good discussion, and I'll likely listen to more 3MA in the future.
However, I'm surprised that with over an hour spent talking about Prison Architect, there wasn't a single mention of Dwarf Fortress. If you've ever played Dwarf Fortress, you will instantly recognize that many parts of Prison Architect was inspired by it. Please excuse me if Dwarf Fortress has been discussed on the podcast previously.
Dwarf Fortress, for anyone who has never played it, is a Sim / City Management game, were you are tasked with taking 7 Dwarves (yes, 7) and setting out to set up a new settlement / fortress somewhere in the wilderness of your randomly generated world. You start by setting up the attributes of your dwarves, and allocating supplies (your one wagon can only hold so much), and then setting off to your carefully (or not so carefully) chosen location. You will want a location that has some trees on the surface for wood, and a stream or other water source, and a good metals in the ground like iron and flux stone that you can use to turn the iron into steal but which doesn't have wet soil (an aquifer) which is difficult to dig through.
You arrive in spring and you need to have at least the basics set up by winter, or your dwarves will likely die. You need to plant crops, setup some basic workshops for wood working, stone working, and craft making, and build some basic sleeping quarters and areas to store things. You can designate where to build things, but you don't directly control which dwarf will do each job. Any dwarf with the proper skill for doing a job may do it, however, 1/2 way through, they may decide that they are hungry, or thirsty or tired, and will wander off to take care of those needs (or may just fall asleep of the floor if you don't have beds yet).
You dig into the land / mountain, and carve out some basic rooms using your miners. Your stone workers take the stone from the miners, and make tables and thrones (chairs) and doors from them. You get a carpenter chopping trees and making beds. You get a farmer or two working on the surface or in mud lined rooms growing plants outside or edible mushrooms underground. You brew some of the plants into alcohol. A craft worker is busy making simple crafts that you will trade to a supply caravan in the fall for supplies you need to survive the winter. The caravan comes and goes and hopefully you have enough to survive the winter. However, the caravan also brings news of your progress to the outside world, and you get more immigrants in the spring.
The next year you build more rooms for the immigrants. You set up some cattle in pens and start raising meat. You send a dwarf to the river to fish. You set up a forge, and start turning some of the ore you dig up into useful items. You get a report that the fisherdwarf was scared off by a bear. So you set up a few dwarfs with some simple weapons from the forge and have then take care of the bear. You get a report that you miners have found a big underground cave. Another caravan comes and goes, and more immigrants arrive.
The next year you get report of strange creatures in the caves. A caravan from the Elves arrives but leaves angry that you attempted to trade them the desecrated corpse of trees. Goblins show up and attack your fortress, however, you luckily have installed some traps that happened to take out their leader, and the rest scramble away. A dwarf gets a strange mood, takes over a workshop and demands mysterious ingredients for their 'masterpiece'. An axedwarf grows attached to his iron axe and names it, and refuses to pick up a better steal one. The goblins attack again, and this time there are twice as many. A baron decides to move in to your fortress, and starts making demands to build certain items, and forbid the trading of certain other items. Just then, a dragon, a colossus, or a forgotten beast from the dawn of the world attacks!
The game is actually really impressive, and also strangely backwards and hard to play. The game generates a world for you, and simulates years of history (100 - 1000+), generating lineages, and wars and civilization expansion, and gods, and more. Your can have your dwarves create carvings, many of which will reference this history. The whole game is actually 3D, having 100+ levels (floors) depending on where you set out, but the game is presented on oldschool text graphics like Nethack / Rogue, showing one 'layer' at a time with 'ascii characters' (I think it is actually OpenGL underneath, and there are graphical tile sets, but the default are ascii characters). The dwarves themselves all have back stores and preferences that you can read. Each dwarf has a description including hair color, ear shape, eye spacing, height, weight, build, etc., even though they are just represented by a single character on screen. There are over 100 skills in the game that each dwarf can level up through use. Fights are simulated in minute detail that you can read in battle reports, including different layers of fat, muscle or organs in the dwarfs or other creature, and include wrestling moves like head or arm locks, nerves can be severed and tendons can be cut causing the loss of the use of a limb, bones can be broken, combatants can be nauseated or knocked out, and strong blows can sever body parts, which will fly away leaving a trail of blood on screen ( red colored periods, commas, colons and semi-colons).
Speaking of which, while the Dwarf Fortress is the main mode of the game, there is also an adventure mode that plays a lot like Nethack / Rogue, except that you can also recruit NPCs to your party, who you only indirectly control, and go on missions for various town / factions, and even explore your previously abandoned fortresses.
To wrap this up, Prison architect is like a reverse Dwarf Fortress, one in which instead of have build a castle / fortress to stop outside attackers (goblins / monsters) from causing harm, you instead start with a contained, semi-hostile force, and have to build a living area (prison) for them and keep them happy and keep them from escaping.
So, if you've never played Dwarf Fortress, you should really give it a look. Playing with the wiki open and even a good tutorial video or two is practically a necessity for new players, but over time a lot of it becomes second nature.
