Cell Block: Prison Puzzle

The Fourth Estates Games Ltd

Contains ads

About this game

HMP Blackmoor is at 99.4% capacity and the vans keep coming. You're the governor on shift. Your job is to find every new arrival a cell before the wing overflows.

Cell Block is a falling-block puzzle game with a dry British sense of humour. Every block is a squad of 16-bit pixel-art prisoners in striped uniforms, chest tags and ball-and-chain. Fit them into the wing, fill a corridor from wall to wall and the whole row gets transferred out.

THE EARLY RELEASE VALVE
Every corridor you clear charges the valve. Once it's full you can pull the lever and empty the two bottom rows instantly. There's a catch. You score nothing for it, the intake gets faster for the rest of the shift, and the paperwork comes back to haunt you.

RECALLS
Every early release books a recall. Fourteen batches later the offenders come back, and a part-filled row of returning prisoners pushes up from the floor. If the wing is already full to the ceiling when they arrive, your shift is over.

PROPER BLOCK-STACKING
• A 10 × 20 wing with fair "bag" randomising, so no long droughts
• Ghost preview showing exactly where a batch will land
• Hold a batch in segregation and swap it in later
• Wall kicks, lock delay, combos and rising levels
• Swipe to move, tap to rotate, flick down to slam it home. Physical keyboards work too

THE RECORD BOARD
• File your best shift to the wing leaderboard and see where you rank
• Start your own cell block and share its four-letter code with friends for a private league
• Pick your own prisoner nickname. No account or sign-up needed

TABLOID NEWS FROM THE WING
Satirical front pages and a running news ticker react to how your shift is going, from capacity crises to ministers losing track of where the vans went. The joke is always on prison policy, never on prisoners.

16-BIT ATMOSPHERE
CRT scanlines, an institutional colour scheme and an original chiptune soundtrack that opens every shift with a classic folk melody. Mute the tannoy whenever you like.

Free to play with ads. Watch an optional video at an amnesty hearing to carry on a lost shift (up to twice per shift). Short ad breaks play between some shifts.

Cell Block is a work of satire. HMP Blackmoor, its staff, its prisoners and every headline are fictional.

What’s new

Full Capacity reward loop: shift orders, near-miss tension, best-score tracker, officer ranks with unlockable wing themes, daily challenge with streaks and reminders, and the new Secretary of State rank with the Whitehall theme.