Prison Empire Tycoon Idle Game Reviews

I really do love this game. It is challenging like none other. I’ve plaid other idles by the same group and they are good, but this one is so much better. The one thing that FULLY irks me is the cafeteria and kitchen. My kitchen is fully upgraded and can feed 64 inmates. The whole facility can hold 98 inmates. They get angry if they can’t eat, and the kitchen can’t make enough food even though it’s fully upgraded. And I’m top of that, if the line is too long in the cafeteria, they inmates won’t eat. So every meal I have at least 5 that get turned away because the line was too long. Put those together and you got angry inmates faster than you can count.
There was another review complaining about the inmates throwing riots after logging back in every single time. This is sooooo frustrating because it’s an idle game, you should be able to leave for a couple hours and not have to worry about all of your guards getting killed and you inmates being taken away. I have my guard room upgraded fully but when I log back in after being gone for an hour there is a riot and at least 20 of them get killed. Inmates = money and money = guards. I can’t have inmates without guards and I can’t have guards without inmates.
I am willing to change my review if things are fixed. But until then.

Got this game because of all the positive reviews. At first I expected a regular idle game, then read that it involves strategy and was sold. I was disappointed so I’m posting this review as a reality check. I was expecting to play a satisfying idle AND true strategy game and this is not that unless you count not overspending as strategy. The whole point is to keep your prison profitable, the only way to increase income is by upgrading prisoners’ cells and having prisoners. The way to decrease is by hiring too many staff members, and it’s easily fixable because you can always fire them. I guess the other part of strategy is keeping prisoners happy and that’s easy but again, upgrades they need are expensive. Don’t even hope to unlock infirmary or other rooms any time soon after starting because of how expensive they are. Overall the game is very basic and doesn’t seem like it involves much strategy. The money generation is extremely, extremely slow for an idle game - you have to wait for hours to get legitimate upgrades or watch ads for money (given your finances are technically in the positive and high, the in-game time is just way too slow). This gets boring and frustrating fast. Plus there is a bug that says “not enough energy” or “not enough water” on some upgrades, even if the meter shows that you have plenty of those resources. Guess what? Upgrading energy and water is very costly as well.

Right now I have two games made by this company on my tablet this one and Idle Police tycoon. Out of the two this one is a lot more fun. I like the strategy in the game. You really have to plan out how you are going to keep prisoners happy even when you aren’t in the game, so when you come back they aren’t all trying to kill each other. However, my biggest complaint about this game is the ads, I don’t mind watching ads to get what I need, I do mind watching the ad and getting nothing, or watching the ad and the screen goes black so I have to reboot the game and worse still tapping on the watch ad button and nothing happens or worse still an ad pops up and the takes you back to the game after a few minutes. Honestly I’d like to start a riot of my own, it’s aggravating to want to help my prisoners but the game has opted not to let me. I’ve contacted them about this issue and of course they blame the ad providers for the issue. If you look up the fixes for these types of issues in the help section they quickly blame you for the problem. Anyway I don’t think I’ll be playing much longer because it’s nearly impossible without ads or money and I past by the help section for money on my search for ad problems…I wouldn’t dream of paying if they can’t get a simple ad problem right.

This was an amazing game. Even if you didn’t upgrade, it was so entertaining to watch the day go by and the prisoners going about their lives. It didn’t take long though, about 15 minutes of game play, before I started having issues. Whenever I just started my prison was small and had no problems. I got through two check ins before my app crashed every time it was time to check in prisoners. I knew every time that bus came, my app would crash. As I made another cell, got more prisoners and more employees, I could only app open for 30 seconds without it crashing, regardless of check ins. Soon (as in the same day I got PrisonEmpireTycoonIdleGame ) I couldn’t even have PrisonEmpireTycoonIdleGame open and run for five seconds without it crashing. Once I got a second new cell, I couldn’t get out of the load screen at all. Whenever it was almost loaded in, my app crashed. I have given up. I have tried deleting and redownloading PrisonEmpireTycoonIdleGame and nothing works. Why even try to get in PrisonEmpireTycoonIdleGame whenever it crashes? I am perfectly willing to change my review if this gets fixed but honestly, I don’t think the developers are going to waste their time on one app whenever a new one could do just as well. I wouldn’t advise downloading at this all. Everyone is having this problem. I don’t care how new your phone is- it’s not happening. Good luck!

I started playing this game just over a week ago. The concept is fun but there are way to many bugs that need worked out before I can continue playing it. Just about every time I try to watch an ad for double money or for a loan one of a couple things happen. Either it never starts and just has me waste time by clicking the bottom several times, or it makes it half way through the video and stops with no benefit, or the video doesn’t load and the game doesn’t give anything. This is true even on initial start up so I don’t get my earnings from my jail working while I was away. I’ve deleted that app a couple times and reinstalled with no improvement. There are also times where I try to upgrade things and the icons on the foreground to the screen don’t sense that I’m touching them. Instead the room in the background comes up. I also wish there was a way to improve the prisoners mood when they get heated. We basically just have to wait it out. Being able to control when they eat/sleep/shower/and have recreation time would help with game play. Basically if they get under there is nothing you can do but wait for a riot. Like I said, good concept but for now I’ll be deleting PrisonEmpireTycoonIdleGame and playing something different. I might check back in a few months and see if anything has improved.

Ads were constantly available prior to the Iron Fortress event and conveniently there are now none available. According to the developer “There is no limit in videos you can watch. However, ad providers may not have any more videos available for your location after a certain time.” They also state “It would be a temporary issue. If it persists, please close your game completely from your device and open it again after a few minutes.” That didn’t work so I tried shutting down my phone & also avoided playing the game for 12 hours, yet there are still no ads. I went over 24 hours without a single ad, was able to play some ads and once again there are no ads. Temporary issue...few minutes? Apparently we define those things very differently.

Sure I don’t live in a major populated city like LA but I should not be put at a disadvantage and expected to pay $9.99+ because ads aren’t available. I’m never going to be able to complete this event without spending real money and that’s just not cool. I will most likely delete this game after the event. I think it’s ridiculous that you’re given an advantage/disadvantage to play the game for free based on your location.

Please fix the bugs. I have my prison running so smoothly...when I’m actively playing. For some reason though if I leave the game for even 20 minutes I come back to a filthy prison, the cooks only serving 3 servings even though I have my kitchen upgraded and enough staff to make food for all the prisoners, and my prison with be seconds away from riot that kills all my guards. The game also glitches with time. I can be building something and come back an hour later and the time for building is still at what is was an hour ago. I actually really like this game. I appreciate that it doesn’t force you to watch adds but simply allows you to watch them for bonuses. The game play is pretty good though I wish we could control the schedule of the prison ourselves or click on individual prisoners/staff to see how they are doing rather than giving the prisoners averages. The cleaning crew and the guards also just kinda bumble around. Like sometimes a janitor will just walk right past trash or if there is a fight a guard on the other side of the prison will run to it rather than the guard standing literally right there. So I wish we could maybe control the staff a little bit. Mostly though I just want the glitches fixed.

Let’s start with the good. I began playing this game because it was advertised to me frequently and I wanted the ads to go away. I started playing causally and the first prison was pretty well paced and, with the help of watching ads to give you boosts in the game, I was able to get through it quickly. It was fun while it lasted.
As for the bad parts of this game, I find the idea of running a prison and making money off inmates to be glorified in a mobile app somewhat wrong. The more I played, the more I didn’t like the idea. Whenever I open my game, I had instant prison riots as if the prisoners couldn’t help themselves and had to riot at every opportunity. I think there should be a cool down on riots every 24 hours because it’s not a good look. Finally, the most flawed part about the gameplay was how slow it is the further you go. The prison I’m on now has been fully upgraded for weeks and I still haven’t met my prisoner quota for a new one. If you wanted to keep me playing, I would extend the one hour afk timer. I can’t imagine checking my phone every hour of the day just to close it because my prison is fully upgraded and I can’t progress in an interactive way. It’s scummy for the game to set the timer so low and put a better timer behind a paywall. For all these reasons, I will be uninstalling.

It’s pretty decent, feels different than your average idle game and I liked that. It was a refreshing take on what idle mobile games are, at first at least. Every time I log on, there’s a riot. Like, my inmates were in perfect condition when I closed PrisonEmpireTycoonIdleGame , where’s the logic in that? Also, in the first prison, I have all cells unlocked, meaning I have 32 prisoners. When mealtime comes around, 32 people cannot stand in line so about 12 of them walk off upset because they “can’t get dinner” because the line is very temporarily too long. (Also have all upgrades for kitchen and max cooks, doesn’t change anything) Another thing is the rehabilitated prisoner amount you must achieve to move on to the next prison... Many have said in other reviews that their prisons are maxed out, and they’re just sitting around waiting for the rehab’d prisoners to finally catch up with their other progress so they can move on. This happens even in the first prison. It just seems like there are some minor oversights here that should’ve been ironed out in testing, but something tells me the motive to make money was greater than the motive to make a great game.

EDIT: Also, when you switch prisons, any time left on your x2 from watching ads is removed. Switching back has no effect.

Some of the issues I’ve noticed have to do with when the prisoners eat. If you have 48 prisoners and the cafeteria can hold 48 of the prisoners, and it’s lunch time there’s always prisoners who turn around and don’t eat. It’s not just 1 or 2 it will be 18 because they don’t want to wait on a line. Also if you leave the game and come back you’ll find the cooks don’t make the full amount of meals. If you have 48 prisoners and you leave or return at the wrong time your cooks will only sometimes cook 14-18 of the 48 required meals. Then there is the janitors. I’m not sure why but it doesn’t take 14 Janitors to deliver 4 carts of clean clothing. The janitors all stop cleaning at 4am to deliver clothes meanwhile only 3-4 of them will grab the carts, so the prison is a mess because the game tells all janitors at this time that they are required to go to the laundry room. By the time half of them are even on there way back all the carts are grabbed and on there way to the cell blocks. It’s a waste of time for all janitors to stop what they are doing for something 3-4 can handle. Overall the game is fun there’s lot of issues with what the characters are doing.

First of all, the thing that annoys me the most is that unless you force stop this game it will not proceed in the background. Even if you spend gems to hire the advisor to allow that. I emailed support regarding this issue and the answer was “just force stop it every time”. Uhhhh disappointing? Also the same issue arises with the construction of areas. If you don’t force stop, areas under construction will not go down in time or complete in the background. I would put this down at night and wake up thinking I’d made a decent chunk of change over night and... no, not a cent. My last big complaint with this game is EVERY TIME I start it up there’s a riot. Like every. Single. Time. Kind of hard to make money in Alcatraz in my workshops when my entire population is eternally in solitary confinement.

This game has a ton of potential. Even with grinding through these issues it’s been fun but the riot situation at Alcatraz it’s made the game almost pointless because you make so much more cash out of the workshops. But the workshops are as dormant as an Antarctic volcano when EVERYONE is in solitary all the time. I don’t know how my prisoners haven’t starved to death yet because they haven’t eaten in a week.

Overall it's a good game. I like being able to work on maxing out one prison while starting on another, so I still have something to do while waiting for money again in one or the other. The riots do get excessive after a while though. I also have the issue of not getting enough food to the prisoners. I have six chefs and the kitchen is completely maxed out. When I'm actively playing, they all get food. (At the moment there are only sixteen prisoners, so it's not something you would think is hard) When I return to the game, there's never enough food. Before writing this review, I opened the game to see that they only had six meals ready. That's ended up causing a riot almost every time I open the game. The same thing can go for the janitors. They seem to stop working as soon as I leave the game as well, which ends up with everything covered in trash when I come back. I'd consider it a near perfect game if the staff actually continued their jobs while I wasn't playing. Other than that it's pretty entertaining.

Edit: The 30 ads don't even give you money. You get the animation showing you've received it, but you haven't. It's also usually only a thousand dollars, which is useless.

Fun game my one issue is the drop off bus. Often times the drop off bus comes just after my prisoners are released, the prisoners have already left the prison and are no longer counted in the number but because they are still walking away from the prison even if already outside the gates I won’t get new prisoners off that bus it’ll just leave. It’s a bit annoying because if no one is taking up those empty prisoner slots I should get more.

My second issue with the game are the riots. I can max out all of the guards equipment and facilities have max level of guards to like 12 prisoners and all my guards will die. I’ve lost 25 guards to only 10 prisoners and this guards were maxed up. Another thing if the best ways to prevent riots are to take care of prisoner needs it’s not fair if my prisoners need hygiene or comfort or something and they just don’t do anything to fix it. They just sit there letting their levels fall lower as if I don’t have the means already set up for them. It’s not fair that they constantly riot and I’ve already given them everything I possibly could. Like if you’re hungry eat!, but no they will stay in the yard playing till at least half of the eating time is used up or worse the cooking staff for no reason I can see just didn’t prepare any food.

This game is amazing to say the least, it’s challenging and not many idle games are challenging. I only have two real issues with the game; first and foremost: the riot system. Riots happen way to often even with maxed out amenities and almost every riot ends with guards being killed so you have to rehire guards. It’s annoying when you max out the guards gear and you still lose every one of your guards. It’s not realistic in that sense, because if there is a riot in a real life prison the guards usually respond with riot gear and not just their uniform and a nightstick, also there should be a function that you can pay for(WITH GAME MONEY AND NOT REAL WORLD MONEY) that enables you to knock all of your prisoners out with tear gas. The other issue I have with the game is the amount of offline collection you get standard, it should be 2 hours and not an hour.

Update, I’m not sure how the money system is supposed to work. My hourly balance is positive yet when I log it I am in the negative. It’s happened for the last 3 times I’ve logged into the game. I don’t understand how that works...and if it keeps happening I’m absolutely going to delete the game and stop playing it. It’s getting annoying

If not the best idle game, Prison Empire is my favorite by far. More in depth than most where you just tap with no consequences or strategy in mind. My only complaint is that you can’t zoom out very far which isn’t why I didn’t give this game 5 stars. Events seems very pay to win, if you don’t spend gems or money during an event, you struggle to reach even close to top 100 with most having scored a lot of points within the first few hours. If events were more balanced and less pay to win, this game would easily be a five star from me. There are little visual bugs and sometimes when you load in while an action is being carried, out like cooking from the chefs, it doesn’t progress no matter how far into the hour you are and enough food for all the prisoners doesn’t get cooked. Another one is when there are a lot of prisoners in line to get food, the line doesn’t carry out into the courtyard and some prisoners don’t get fed and remain angry until they do. This happens even with a maxed kitchen and lunchroom. The game could be polished more, but it’s still a great game to play if you’re bored and like idle games and want something different in that genre!

Bugs. This game doesn’t have many, but has one very bad one. Although my prison is designed such that when I’m online, my prisoners needs are taken care of perfectly, *EVERY TIME* I come back online, if it was more than an hour, I have a riot. Fortunately I am good at strategy games and this one is no exception- focus on upgrading cells (except for light bulbs) and then the cafe and make sure everyone has a shower in the shower area. Lastly make sure everyone can eat and put decent work out equipment in the yard and voila, your prison works just fine. EXCEPT THIS DUMB GLITCH CAUSES RIOTS EVERY TIME I REJOIN!!

Please fix this devs.

One other thing. Prison busses need to either come more often (preferably every time your send a bunch out the door, a count down for the next bus would start) or you need to be able to upgrade the size of the busses that come. It’s really annoying because the only thing holding me back is ridiculously long periods of time between busses, in which I lose a lot of money. This game is difficult starting out- carefully working to stop early riots which hurt your funds a lot... and it’s quite fun once you get your basic prison situated and can start expanding rapidly!

I saw an ad for this game and immediately started the download. The first 2 days were great. I made some in app purchases because I was having fun and wanted to support the company. After I finished upgrading the second prison, my game, like most people that play, stopped working and wouldn’t leave the loading screen. It’s been almost 16 hours since I’ve been able to load it up. I sent an email to the company asking for some help and haven’t heard anything back....yet. Hopefully we’ll all get some help or an update to fix this without taking away our progress. But for now, be aware. This game is a lot of fun and I hope that if you play it, it won’t bug out on you to. If/when I get a response back and my issue is resolved, I’ll update my rating. Until then, I can’t give a game more than 2 stars when my money just went to waste.

Update: I uninstalled my game (for the fifth time) and my game loaded up pretty quick. All of my progress is still there and I’m working on prison number 3. Let’s hope it stays like this! I’ve updated my rating to 5 stars.

So far this game is fair and fun to play looking forward to expand my prison but the only thing I hate so much while I spend $25k to built a new laundry room it takes 15 min with having 3 or 4 builders I put my phone down for a while to do things like clean or whatever around the house I come back to check on my laundry build and it says I have to pay $25k again and also wait 15 more min and I spend actual gems to built right away and it still does that please fix this because I’m in the point where I just wanna delete PrisonEmpireTycoonIdleGame and I was looking forward to spend money. Btw just upgrade most of the things on the prison and as soon I close PrisonEmpireTycoonIdleGame and reopened everything I worked so hard went back how it was like if I didn’t do anything gotta upgrade everything again this game is awful you developers need to fix this because it’s a waist of time putting in time and effort so when you play again it’s like you didn’t do anything I give this game a 1 star 😡

Updated review: they seem to have fixed the issue mentioned below pretty quickly! I still LOVE the game. I’m sad I missed out on so much of iron fortress, however, I’m grateful to have my game back! There are still a few bugs that need to be fixed but nothing that affects the gameplay too much. I enjoy it, it’s technically not an “idle” game you can only collect one hour outside of the game unless you pay for more.

Old review: Well, I LOVED this game before yesterday. Yesterday PrisonEmpireTycoonIdleGame started crashing. I can’t even get it open up. The loading screen crashes. Otherwise I’d give this game a 4/5 stars. But the fact that one update ago I was able to play and now it’s completely broken and has yet to be addressed or fixed is ridiculous. I give it a 1 star because I cannot give it a zero star or else I would. I’ve tried updating my phone, didn’t work. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling PrisonEmpireTycoonIdleGame , didn’t work. I force closed all my background apps, still didn’t work. It’s definitely not on my end. I’m hoping this gets to someone because the link to report issues with the game is broken. The link goes to “error 404” page...

This is a very well put together game. There are far more pros than cons. It isn’t full of ads which is a nice change. It seems to be balanced pretty well in my opinion. There are different methods and styles of playing. There are some minor glitches and quirks that can be frustrating at times, but it’s not a dealbreaker by any means. No game is perfect. I have spent some money on in app purchases (about $10-$15) but it’s not required for progression within the game. I have only 1 suggestion, and I hope the developers read this because it’s so minor, yet such a big deal. Please let us zoom all the way out and view our entire prison. It’s so frustrating being forced to be zoomed in so close to everything and it makes it annoying having to scroll around to everything. I don’t know anything about game development, but it shouldn’t be that difficult to allow us to zoom all the way out. That would make this game so much better and easier to find everything a lot quicker. Other than that, it’s a fantastic game and I can’t wait for the next update with the new prison! Keep up the good work guys!!