My biggest gripe is that it slows down a lot when your prison gets bigger. Past 500 inmates it is barely crawling along, so you can more or less tab out and play another game while PA is running...
Apart from that, though, the game is actually in good shape for early access. I'd agree that the 30$ price tag is a bit much, but if you can get it on sale for 15$ or even 20$ - go ahead and buy it.
The interesting thing with the game is that the devs let the player decide how he wants to run his prison:
-> You can create a modern rehabilitation facility where you try to fulfill the needs of your prisoners as best as you can and offer all the support to help rehabilitate them - or you carete a Gulag with lousy rations and 10 hour work days. Do you want to supress your prisoners by letting armed guards patrol in the cell tracts (risking that they nick a shotgun if they manage to take the guy down) or do you want to rely on minimal staff and use video monitoring to check what's going on in the prison rooms?
-> You can set your prisoner intake to only accept "low-sec" inmates who you can basicially leave unguarded 24/7 - or you accept "high-sec" guys with a chance to get a legendary prisoners. These guys can start riots just by being near people, might insta-gib your guards with a fork and still rampage after taking 3 teaser shots.
It is not a hard game to play, but much like City: Skylines, it gives the player a lot of options. And just like those games things can spiral out of control really quickly.
I remember a prison where a super-max prisoner started a riot in one of my canteens. A swarm of 50 angry prisoners overwhelmed the two guards there and then raided the nearby workshop (using the guard's keys to unlock the doors) to turn the tools into makeshift weapons. Despite a full lockdown they managed to occupy two cell blocks, which meant almost half the prison (120 inmates or so) was part of the revolt now. Initially I tried to resovled the whole thing via a siege, but then I got a call that I had 24 hours to put the riot down or it would be "game over". Which didn't matter that much, though, since they had started to work their way towards the armory and my protective custody inmates. The armed guard at the entrance of the protective custody wing was overwhelmed and killed and one of the high-sec rioters took his shotgun and began killing the protective custody inmates found there. That forced me to call in riot police and issue free-fire for all remaining armed guards, which resulted in a really bloody mess when I finally manged to put down the whole riot. In the end over 20 prisoners were shot dead (inlcuding the super-max guy and the shotgun nicker, the rest thankfully surrended quickly at the sight of firearms) and I lost 5 more guards and 3 riot police guys to the angry mob.
Another time a prisoner used a stolen lighter to set my Canteen on fire - and until the fire fighters arrived the fire had already spread to a generator, cutting power for half the facility. That promted a riot by the inmates, which meant I had to escort the firefigthers to the fire with my armed guards. I'd say those a pretty DF-like stories.
They also release monthly YouTube videos to give insight on the game development progress.
The last one is particulary interesting, because they now have added death-row - and give detailed insight how the mechanics work and why they did it that way.
