Good day my lovely deviants, and welcome yet again to Joyful Stick. Miss our last entry? You can read it here. Today, we’re going to discuss Karryn’s Prison, a recently released RPG maker styled darling that some of you are sure to find appealing.
Jail Fucking Sucks
The American prison system is home to the world’s largest number of incarcerated people. An overwhelming number of these are people locked up on mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offenses-or, as Johnny Cash once said, “victims of the times”. As someone who has had friends on both sides of the law, I can say without a shadow of a doubt I would sooner fall on my own sword than ever be subjected to our court system.
Jail fucking sucks, and not because it’s an utterly dehumanizing and demonstrably inhuman way to deal with most of those within. Jail fucking sucks because funding, specifically from private institutions and whatever state you reside in, ultimately determines your quality of life inside. The less funding a prison receives, the far more likely you are as an individual to be subjected to the worst conditions imaginable. Even if your prison does have great funding, there’s an overwhelmingly likely chance that money will be misappropriated to line the pockets of that institution’s administration. Regardless of if you find yourself in the drunk tank for a night or at “the state house” on federal charges, you can see evidence of lack of funding all about you. Broken plumbing, aged lead lined pipes, broken windows and more await should you ever find yourself in cuffs.
Few deserve to be subjected to such horrors save the worst of us. Many people who find themselves imprisoned over receiving treatment, counseling and necessary help towards reintegration become repeat offenders due to a total lack of options otherwise. That’s before we get to the fact many states in America will scuttle those with mental illness, those with addictions and more into “gen-pop”, further damaging them to a life they never, ever asked for.
Once more with feeling-Jail fucking sucks. I can’t emphasize that enough. It’s neither a deterrent to crime nor a means of solving it. It serves nothing more than to throw the poor, the downtrodden, the addicted and the ill into the meat grinder of capitalism, patting itself on the back for occasionally taking out one or two bad actors.
It’s no surprise then that imprisonment is often chosen as a setting for a wide variety of media. It’s a glimpse into a man-made hell where the only law obeyed is survival of the fittest. Entire artists, discographies, film careers and award winning video games were built on this concept alone-and Karryn’s Prison is no exception. While lacking the gore of those other titles, KP places us directly in the seat of newly hired titular heroine Karryn as she assumes control over a modern-fantasy style prison. If she succeeds (or fails) is ultimately left up to us, but the title is wrapped within a robust choice system that makes play a delight.
Spare Not The Rod
The title starts with Karryn being appointed by her prince (and crush) as head warden. Karryn assumes such a position is below her, but readies herself for her duties post-haste. For Karryn, the greater failure wouldn’t be running the prison poorly, but disappointing her majesty. Within seconds she dons a skin-tight latex leather suit and hat, and quickly sets to work clearing out the horrors before her. She does so by resoundingly, constantly whooping ass with a giant ax and her bare hands.
For those of you into fem-dom, back up from the screen, you’re fogging the glass. You’re on the right track however. Karryn herself is very much styled as a trope-tastic femdom with fully voice acted lines. If you’re into humiliation, be ready for a powerful and attractive woman to belittle you throughout combat. Unless she starts losing.
It may be presumptuous to start with the combat system over the narrative, but in truth it’s where players will spend a majority of their time. Karryn has to physically fight wave after wave of prisoners in order to establish order on respective floors. Combat is designed after a rock-paper-scissors “strong against vs. weak against” system of attacks, which can be leveled up through training. However, this is complimented by Karryn having to actively monitor her arousal state during fights. I never in a million years thought I’d read the phrase “supress pussy desire” in a title, but here we are. Monitoring these states via a set of hearts in the bottom left of the screen is of the utmost importance. The higher they get, the more sexually aggressive enemies will be. They’ll literally stop fighting and attempt to pull your clothes off, start jacking off, and stare at Karryn’s body. Should Karryn lose a fight, she’ll be quieted away to a separate room and given a messy fucking or bukake.
Which, ironically enough given the circumstances, she finds incredibly arousing. Much like other H-games, there’s no true way to “lose” the game so much as varied paths of purity and naughtiness. This once again is ultimately determined by how you approach combat, with each success raising Karryn’s “lust level” slightly less than each loss. Winning constantly opens up more unhanded and armed combat manuvers. Losing consistently allows Karryn to acquire new taunts and flaunts, subduing men via fucking instead. While the choice is truly yours, all of this does play directly into the game’s narrative.
Wet Prison Floors
Karryn is an extremely prideful and powerful woman. She’s also an incredibly sexual one. While you can successfully play the entire title without fucking another person, Karryn herself will have to masturbate within whatever safe havens she can find. As she levels up, this becomes a growing necessity, especially if you choose a trait at character creation which feeds into this. Being someone who enjoys taking “puritan” runs through titles, I decided to make Karryn a masochist. This was a horrible mistake, as the more I kicked ass, the more Karryn got turned on. It reached a point of having to frequently save, masturbate and hope that prisoners didn’t stumble across me. It almost made the puritan run more difficult than it was worth.
So, I broke. I decided to start fucking as many people as I could. The sex scenes (including Karryn’s solo moments) are incredibly well drawn and feature mild animation. It was Karryn’s voice acting itself that I found the most arousing. While some scenes will repeat, it’s worth noting that if there’s a way to fuck someone it happens in this game. Bondage scenes were a frequent sight as well.
Turning Karryn from a tough-as-steel warden into someone lascivious isn’t without it’s changes however. On top of kicking everyone in the dick, you do legitimately have to run the prison. This means choosing everything from making sure the mess hall is clean to choosing to open a hospital wing. Who, what and how above board you decide to spend your money on balances with a “corruption” scale, which is also affected by how Karryn herself decides to act. Wanna give the guards a blow job to increase security in your bedroom? You can. Want to pay for education for the inmates and risk them realizing how badly they’re being treated? You can do that too. This intermingling of decisions gives each moment weight, as Karryn’s ultimate goal is to radically reform the prison. If it’s for honor, the dollar or the dick is the player’s choice.
Yet, you have to answer for the consequences of your actions, and often. I mean this as seriously as I can-I haven’t seen this variety and depth of narrative branching since at least Mass Effect 1, or the original Fallout. Once the player firmly grasps the system (usually after clearing the first floor), the game truly opens up tremendously. Was I expecting a business management sim with my horny dungeon crawler RPG? Absolutely not, but I actually enjoyed it. Weighing the scales between being benevolent and actively fighting my prisoners was a joy.
These choices come home to roost as you progress through the five floors of the prison as well. Did you save the doctor? Well, now you have someone that can heal you. Did you take down the giant orc boss? Show mercy, and he’ll be your sworn defender the rest of the game. Decide to show them all who has the biggest WAP this side of the kingdom? Oh, they’ll follow you for all kinds of reasons. Choices also affect dialogue and interaction to a degree I was not anticipating from a title with a triple G cup protagonist. The entire time, Karryn herself naturally sways from her overtly hostile and combative demeanor to parting her legs and panting without so much as an odd hitch in dialogue. Karryn’s responses to stimuli feels totally natural, and I can’t praise that enough.
Likewise, the environment of the prison itself is suitably dank, dark and depressing. The further you descend, the more claustrophobic and barbarous it feels. Prisoners light their cells with candles and shit in buckets because there’s no utilities. The hardest among them will seek conflict-but more often than not, the men down below are already so beaten by the system that they simply throw the odd comment or catcall. If they even have the energy to do that at all.
Critiques
KP is such an incredibly well crafted title that my gripes with it are actually few.
For one, the game artificially ratchets up in difficulty, even on the easiest setting. As I stated previously, this makes puritan runs increasingly difficult. Micromanagement of the prison and the extent to which your choices will affect the environment, narrative and your experience directly is rarely clear. Some options have far more bearing on this than others as well, with none indication as to which will have the most drastic effect. I understand that this is part of the management appeal, but on occasion I grew frustrated at the increasing chaos in the prison simply because I spent money to learn new combat moves. My initial playthrough had Karryn as an unstoppable tank-and then she just wasn’t.
This is indeed a “hardcore” title. It features bondage, non consensual groping and much more. The prisoners are almost universally disrespectful and will stop at nothing to get at Karryn. While many scenes play out through Karryn enjoying the antics, it’s something to keep in mind if this isn’t your cup of tea.
The sex scenes are focused almost exclusively on Karryn as well, with a rotating cast of cocks (human, lizardman, goblin and orc). While this certainly didn’t bother me, I know it’ll be a turn off for some people.
Conclusion
Karryn’s Prison is currently twenty dollars on steam. There’s roughly 8-10 hours of gameplay depending on what choices you make with multiple endings. It features incredible voice acting alongside great animation, and overall is an enjoyable and pleasurable dungeon crawler. It has a lot going on, so I recommend learning the game’s systems and starting over with a new run to get a more rewarding experience. There’s no penalty for doing this, either.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with the title.
And came, several times.
Cop it.
-j