Prison Architect
Worth it · Strategy · 2015
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
WAIT.
Worth it today. The Winter Sale opens Dec 17, and it was discounted in 8 of its last 8 seasonal sales; 75% in the Winter Sale 2025.
Today
$29.99Worth it
Typical seasonal cut
$7.4975% offWorth it
- Cost per hour▼
- $1.80/hr
- ReviewsA
- 89% of 73,975
- Critics
- 83 players 6 higher
- Genre rank
- Top 2% Strategy
Holding it back: Cost per hour, Recent reviews
Why
Recent reviews trending down: 42% over the last 30 days against 89% all-time.
Watch this gameOne alert at $7.49 or less.
Time and effort
- Main story
- 16.7h
- To 100%
- 72.8h 4.4x the story
- Finish
- 8% reach the ending
- Achievements
- 18
Price and sales
- Sales
- 95 on record
- Typical cut
- 75% off
- Steam low
- $2.99 June 2024
- Sale every
- 40d last October 2026
Players and genre
- Online
- 752 now
- Recent reviews
- 42% 30 days
- Cheaper than
- 3% of its genre
- Better reviewed
- 94% of its genre
Price and player charts
The drop-off
32% start to 8% finishSteam counts fewer than one in ten of its players at the ending achievement. Steam global achievements
The value story
The value story
Across all 95 discounts in the 13 years tracked, the median cut is 75 percent, about 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended about 3 weeks ago.
Its score sits in the top 2 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 97 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 94 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Reus 2 ($24.99, scores 89) beats it on value, while it beats The Last Starship ($19.99, scores 28).
More about Prison Architect
Steam's global achievement data puts about 8 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. On a 16.7-hour game, the hours short of it still count in its price per hour. Players rate it 89 percent positive over its lifetime, but the last 30 days run 42 percent. Something recent has soured the room. Of the 799 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 4 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written November 2025 to October 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 63 percent of the 2,493 reviews written there were positive, against 89 percent overall, and those are 4 percent of everything written about it.
The main story runs 16.7 hours. Doing everything runs 73, 4.4 times as long.
Buy now or wait
Buy now or wait
Last discount ended 19 days ago.
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
Grades: S best, D weakest
S is the best grade and D the weakest, judged as a buyer. ▲ raises the score, ▼ lowers it, ? is an input we do not have, • is a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
What players say
Ignore the review by bombing, people simply cannot accept that Discord rules apply equally to everyone.
2 more reviews
kinda hard to follow but the challenge is good. it took me years to get the game haha. but it's fun and funny. you really have to use your brain on this one. esp on the planning part so your prison will do its job, or else it's gonna be really chaotic. haha!
I tend to enjoy games where there is a form of economy and you are managing something logistically. This game hits the right spots for what I look for in this style of game. There is enough variety to keep you coming back for a lot of hours for the price of admission. The DLC's add some pretty excellent content to keep the game running further still. There are a few processes that could be improved but as they are...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
About the game
Only the world’s most ruthless Warden can contain the world’s most ruthless inmates. Design and develop your personalized penitentiary in Prison Architect.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 6 GB of memory, Nvidia 8600 / Radeon equivalent (2009 era), 399 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Cite this score
Prison Architect scores 77/100 on the BANG Score (worth it) as of Nov 8, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/233450/prison-architectReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Nov 3, price as of Nov 7. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.