PrisonIdle vs Torn

Torn built an enormous criminal city. PrisonIdle is building something much smaller on purpose: a prison where idle progression, familiar rivals, live events and persistent systems all keep colliding with each other.

Let's get something out of the way immediately.

Torn is enormous.

It has crimes, factions, businesses, jobs, stocks, education, travel, racing, gambling, properties, player markets, missions, combat and years upon years of systems layered into the same persistent world.

Trying to launch a new browser crime RPG and win by announcing "we also have seventeen menus" would be a terrible plan.

PrisonIdle is interesting for almost the opposite reason.

We're taking some of the things that make persistent browser RPGs special and asking what they look like when idle progression is part of the foundation, rather than something attached afterwards.

Torn gives you a city. PrisonIdle gives you a cell block.

Torn's greatest strength is breadth.

Torn City is deliberately a sandbox. You can become a fighter, trader, business owner, faction member, criminal, gambler, investor, racer or some horrifying combination of all seven.

There is an enormous amount to learn because the world is intentionally enormous.

PrisonIdle starts from a tighter fantasy: you're an inmate inside a persistent prison.

That limitation is useful.

Instead of building twenty unrelated activities simply because a city could contain them, systems can continually feed back into the prison, its economy, its inmates and the hierarchy between them.

More systems isn't automatically the same thing as more decisions

The biggest philosophical difference is probably your time

Torn comes from the classic browser-RPG tradition of regenerating resources.

Energy fuels activities such as training and combat, while Nerve is used for crimes. Those resources regenerate over time and can also be restored or supplemented through other systems.

It's an extremely effective persistent-RPG loop.

PrisonIdle still wants active players.

It just doesn't want being available every few minutes to become a character stat.

Both games understand why persistent worlds become personal

This is where PrisonIdle and Torn are much closer.

Persistent browser RPGs become interesting because the other names on the screen don't disappear when the match ends.

You see people again.

You remember who attacked you.

You remember who gave you a good trade.

You remember which group keeps appearing above yours.

Torn has scale. PrisonIdle can use familiarity.

Torn has thousands of active players and a large established community.

That's a huge advantage when you want a world that feels busy at almost any hour.

But smaller persistent games can produce a different feeling.

You start recognising names.

The player who got the ridiculous item isn't one person among millions.

It's that idiot you've been arguing with in chat all week.

Entering an old economy and entering a young one feel completely different

Neither is inherently better.

Joining an old world lets you explore an enormous amount of history.

Joining a young world gives you a chance to become part of the history other people eventually hear about.

PrisonIdle also wants the quiet routine to occasionally disappear

Idle progression works best when being away feels acceptable.

But a persistent multiplayer game also needs moments where you suddenly want to stay.

That's where PrisonIdle's live Riot system fits into the bigger design.

That's an intentional contrast.

Most of the time, PrisonIdle should be comfortable with you leaving.

Occasionally it should produce something interesting enough that you choose not to.

PrisonIdle vs Torn at a glance

Which one should you play?

PrisonIdle doesn't need Torn to be bad for PrisonIdle to be interesting

Torn has survived and grown for a reason.

It proved that a persistent text-heavy browser RPG can create a genuinely enormous social world without becoming a traditional downloadable MMO.

Games like PrisonIdle exist partly because games like Torn proved this format still has life in it.

We're simply interested in taking some of that DNA somewhere different.

Torn gives you somewhere to live. PrisonIdle wants somewhere you keep coming back to.

Torn is the larger game.

It has more systems, more history, a much larger established community and an extraordinary amount of accumulated depth.

PrisonIdle isn't going to win that comparison by counting menu items.

That's not really the competition.

The question we're interested in is whether a persistent browser crime RPG can be built around a different relationship with the player.

Build your inmate.

Make useful decisions.

Let those decisions keep mattering while you're gone.

Return to a world where the same people are still trading, climbing, arguing and plotting.

And when the prison suddenly erupts?

You'll probably want to stick around for that bit.

PrisonIdle is not affiliated with Torn or Torn City. Torn and related names belong to their respective owners. This comparison is intended to explain differences in game design, progression and play style. Features in either game may change over time.