Prison Tycoon

The premise of the game is to create a functional prison complete with walls, guard towers, and housing wings, plus dining, exercise, and medical facilities. The objective of the game is ultimately to turn your low-security incarceration facility into a profitable maximum-security prison. Funding is collected by the player through state funding, charitable donations, and inmate labor depending on myriad factors, such as employee satisfaction and inmate happiness and rehabilitation. Players have the option to start with a completely blank slate in a free-play mode or with the basic layout of an existing prison but with several problems that need to be addressed in challenge mode.

The challenges range from rehabilitating a certain number of inmates or reducing the number of riots and fights within the prison, to simply reaching a certain level of security. To create a prison, the player places buildings or walls along a grid system by selecting which building they would like and placing it somewhere within the boundaries of the map. There are over 100 different buildings that can be constructed. Within certain buildings the player can build different rooms, from over 100 to choose from, such as individual cells with multiple beds or solitary confinement cells. Buildings come with appropriate staffing, for example guard towers come with guards already positioned in the tower and medical facilities come with medical staffing.

Prison Tycoon received generally poor grades from critics. Xplay's Time Stevens gave the game only one star out of five, concluding his review by writing that "Prisons aren't supposed to be fun, so maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that a game about prisons isn't either." GameZone gave the game a score of 5/10, praising the idea and concept but complaining about clunky graphics, dysfunctional camera angles, and lack of instructions. While most players agreed the basic premise was unique and interesting, some common complaints about the game included bad camera angles, lackluster graphics, choppy or slow framerates, annoying music and sound, and limited help for players.