Press Kit

The most Authentic Prison Game Ever Written

Everything from smuggling and hiding contraband, bribing guards and enforcing debts. Immersed in the bloody and political world of gang politics, when to war, and when to make peace. Manage and upgrade your gang, recruit new members, dominate the prison, and collect tax. The ultimate goal? Control the yard.

Key Points

Built for Android and IoS. If you would like access to an advance copy of the game for reviewing purposes, get in touch at: press@prisongangwars.com with an email linked to a Play Store account.
Projected release date: Autumn 2024.
Our game studio is an indie studio called Black Halo Games. We are so small, our office holds the record for the smallest office in Europe! www.blackhalogames.com

The Goal

The end goal of all prison gangs is one thing: to control the yard

The yard is where cons go to stretch their legs under the sky, associate with other cons and to trade. Sometimes the yard is only place where groups from different parts of the prison
can meet. Whichever gang controls the yard, controls the prison.

Why? Two reasons: money and power. Controlling the yard means controlling trade, the sale of contraband. Often the gangs are the only groups with enough power to keep control and to organise smuggling routes into the prison

All aspects of Prison Gang Wars are as authentic as time has allowed, and to still keep it a game, and not a simulation. This includes:

Smuggling contraband and cell phones
Stashing goods
Bribing guards
How payments for goods are arranged through external accounts

The need for debts to be enforced
Warring and negotiating with other gangs
The convict code
Searches, both cell and personal
Phone calls and visitation

How Authentic?

As possible

The inspiration for the game came from the book: The Social Order of the Underworld by David Skarbek. In this groundbreaking book, Mr Skarbek puts forward the ideas that prison gangs are not chaotic and bloodthirsty for the sake of it. Quite the contrary. Prison gangs are the governing bodies of the prison world. As far as is possible this is implemented in the game with a realistic economy, and gang politics ran by an expert system AI.

The game also draws from other books to make the social aspects of the experience authentic. A mechanic called Rep recognises this, also known as your Face or your Jacket. If you are attacked and outnumbered, if you run from the fight you will lose Rep. If you stand
and fight, and lose, you still stand to gain Rep. In the game, if you lose half your health in a fight, you can then leave a fight without losing Rep.

Comic Book Art

A leading design goal was to make the game like playing in a comic book, so as much as possible the game has been hand drawn by comic book artists. The 2.5D backgrounds, including the furniture, fittings and other objects are all individual objects drawn using our own method to create a comic book environment that can actually be explored by the player with the references being as close to real prisons as possible as well as comic book style cut scenes.

Running in an Emulator

Prison Gang Wars is designed for a rich mobile experience, but many players including streamers prefer to run on PC in an emulator. To allow for this, the game has different graphics seƫngs for low, medium and high. If you are running on an emulator such as Bluestacks or Nox Player, then you may want to set the graphics seƫng to high.

Dice Roller

Designed to work like a roleplaying game, each character has attributes and skills which can be improved with play such as Speed, Fists and Dealing. Whenever they attempt an action such as fighting, dealing or hiding contraband, they make a roll to see if they are successful. We use a dice roller so the player can see how many dice they get, and the outcome of their rolls and how to improve for next time.