Prison Architect
Give it 3 hours
What the data shows
- In the first 2 hours 1 in 3 reviews are negative (35%); after 20h it's 1 in 11 (9%).
- Fully opens up by hour 7.
- The game has no story achievements, so drop-off points can't be measured.
- Only 32% of owners have even the first achievement — the rest barely played.
When it gets good
Share of positive reviews by how many hours the reviewer had played when writing the review.
before it gets good opening up fully opened up
Based on all 74,055 Steam reviews in every language. Median playtime in a sample of 298 reviews: 31.8h for positive, 16.7h for negative. Almost every game is rated lower in the first 2–3 hours: that window includes refunds and quick first impressions. What matters is how deep the dip is and how fast the game recovers.
Where players quit
Share of players who started the game and reached each story milestone. 100% is the most common achievement (31.7% of owners), so people who bought the game and never launched it don't count.
This game has no story achievements, so we can't tell where players quit.
All achievements (18)
story milestone ending side
- Get Busy Living Achieve a re-offending rate of 25% 100%
- Stone Walls Build a sandbox prison with 100 prisoners 100%
- Warden Loaded a prison from Steam Workshop 58%
- Wait and Hope Unlock entire tech tree 39%
- Samuel Norton Have a cashflow of $50,000 or more 36%
- Spare The Rod Stopped a riot of 50 or more prisoners 35%
- I May Have Found A Way Out Of Here Escape from a decent prison in escape mode 26%
- Throw The Book At Them Complete the story 25%
- Don't Put Me In The Dark Executed a prisoner on death row 24%
- Iron Bars Build a sandbox prison with 500 prisoners 21%
- D.B. Cooper Sell your prison and make over $1,000,000 profit 15%
- Freedom Complete optional objective on Bootstraps 13%
- Crowd Control Complete all optional objectives on Riot 12%
- Reformation Complete all optional objectives on Conviction 12%
- Confined Build a sandbox prison with 1000 prisoners 7.3%
- Architect Shared a prison via Steam Workshop 5.4%
- ... It's What You Can Prove Unlocked all game bible pages 2.8%
- It's Not What You Know... Unlocked all polaroids 2.2%