Prison Architect's Alpha 5 update adds foundation fixes and firemen

Introversion have released a new version of Prison Architect that improves a selection of existing tools, fixes numerous bugs and adds firemen. The changes are explained by Prison Architect's producer Mark Morris and designer Chris Delay in their video update.

You can now designate areas of your prison as staff only. Inmates will avoid these, unless they're "misbehaving". Which is apparently a thing that prisoners sometimes do. Also, you no longer have to watch your prison burn to the ground should a fire "accidentally" break out. Firemen can now be called out and directly controlled to surround and extinguish a blaze.

Perhaps the most important update, however, is an overhaul to foundation placement that makes building and extending your structures much more user friendly. You can now choose to either extend or create a new room based on where you drag the selection box from. It looks like a great improvement of one of the game's more fiddly tasks.

Alpha 5 is out now and can be grabbed from the download page. The full patch list is available on the Introversion forum . If you've yet to try your hand at confining hardened criminals, you can get the game from here .

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.