Getting the job done news

I think it's finally time to talk about how quests, or jobs, as we call them in Prisonscape, work. I'm going to go through two jobs that are actually in the game and tell the different ways of achieving the end goal. If you don't want any spoilers for the game, you should stop reading after this paragraph. The way most jobs in Prisonscape work is that there are many ways to complete them. With a combination of RPG elements and item finding and manipulation from classic adventure games, the player can build up different kind of characters and still complete the jobs.

Getting back to the kitchen
In this job the Aryan Brotherhood leader wants you to help them take the kitchen back from the black inmates. For this, you have to do a series of miniquests and once you have completed enough of these, the kitchen administration will be handed to the whites. Some examples of doing this include:
- Create a rat problem by putting dead fish in the air ventilation of the kitchen. For this, you'll need Intelligence & Agility stats, and Intimidation and Pick pocketing skills will also help with the task
- Spread rumours about the foul quality of the food. Uses Intelligence stat, and Intimidation skill might help a bit
- Bribe one the guards to let you in the kitchen and do some re-work on the refridgerator so that the food will we spoilt over night. You need some trade goods for bribing and Intelligence stat & Electronics skill for the sabotage. Haggling skill will give you a small bribery boost
- Beat up some of the sous-chefs so that the kitchen will be understaffed. Requires good fighting skills and Strength
- Bribe other inmates to complain about the food. Requires a LOT of trade goods

Not all of these minijobs are required, of course.

Snitching
One of the officers ask the player for information about other inmates. The rewards of this job are generous and it also gives you better reputation amongst the guards. If the player gets caught, his reputation goes down with ALL gangs. Officers ask for different kind of information and this is often learned by talking to other inmates or doing jobs for them. Some of the information includes:
- Find a weapon stash of one the gangs (information gained through doing another job or searching the prison environment)
- Find how drugs are brought in (information gained through talking to some of the inmates whom you have good reputation with)
- Find out some of the "targets" in the prison (this information is also gained through series of jobs and after gaining trust from some of the gang bangers)

These were just two examples of different kind of jobs in the game. Our aim is to make the game so that you don't have make a super character with incredible stats and skills (unless you want to!)to solve the puzzles and problems in the game. Hopefully we create a nice mixture of adventure and role-playing!

In other news, we have started working on the user interface and we've seen some incredible progress from our graphic designer. In the near future we can finally say goodbye to those Final Fantasy style blue boxes. ;-) Here's a little work-in-progress teaser image: