Prison Architect Update 6 brings seasons and weather

Only a month has passed since the last big Prison Architect update, and the developers are already back with a brand new patch for everyone to enjoy, this time around focusing on performance improvements, weather and seasons, and some important quality of life changes.

If you're interested in seeing all of the changes in action and explained by the developers themselves you will find the video below, but if you're not up for watching two guys goof around for 40 minutes (which you definitely should) I'll also include a brief summary:

 

If you've ever been annoyed at the fact that some jobs seemingly take forever to complete, despite your workers quite clearly running around and doing less important errands, you'll be happy to hear that you can now mark any job as a high priority task. In other words, you will be able to order any available workers (who aren't already on a high priority job) to stop what they're doing, drop everything on the floor and rush to do your bidding as soon as possible. Best of all, by hovering over an in-progress job you will be able to highlight your little worker drone and observe what exactly its doing, where its going, and so forth.

Continuing off from the ideas introduced in Updates 4 and 5 Prison Architect will now support seasons and weather, meaning that outdoor temperatures will vary based on the time of year and current conditions. Besides simply worrying about things being hot or cold you will also have to adjust accordingly to various weather patterns such as torrential downpours, snow and frost, heatwaves, and so on. Having your prisoners outside during a monsoon will naturally result in them becoming disgruntled and in need of comfort, warmth, and new clothing. Failing to do any of that might result in riots, or even dead prisoners as standing around half-naked during a blizzard tends to not be the best idea in the world.

Prison Architect lets you follow your workers now

You can now keep a constant watch on not just the prisoners, but also your workers!

Most importantly, if you hate any of the relatively controversial additions such as gangs, events, or weather you can simply disable them in the newly added Map Settings screen found in the Extras menu. Its not a big change as far as content goes, but for those among you that might not enjoy these new features there's a happy alternative. Do keep in mind, however, that these options will only be customizable when you first create your map, so do decide on what sort of an experience you're aiming for before you invest hours in to your state-of-the-art prison only to realize that dealing with gangs is a bit too annoying for your liking.

There's also a bunch of new optimizations changes and fixes that should result in a much smoother experience for everyone involved. If you're interested in all of the extremely specific details on what and why is being changed I'd recommend going through the video, the developers do a good job of explaining their decisions and thought process.

Finally, if you're up for deciding what sort of a game Introversion should work on next I'd recommend you head over here and vote on the prototype that interests you the most. Personally, the Wrong Wire seems like the one with the most potential, but you might disagree, so do make sure to have your voice heard.