Inside Job First Look: I Became a Tobacco Magnate in a Prison Run by Idiots
Inside Job has a functioning prison schedule, contraband trading, crafting and guards who occasionally remember they're supposed to be guarding something. What it doesn't yet have, judging by my limited solo playthrough, is a convincing sense that being a criminal inside this prison is particularly dangerous.
Within my first few days, I'd accumulated two packs of cigarettes, acquired a homemade shank and discovered that assaulting another inmate attracted remarkably little attention. At this rate, I wasn't planning an escape. I was considering running for pod boss.
Rafiq Studios launched Inside Job into Steam Early Access on November 2, 2026, promising prison routines, suspicion systems and cooperative escapes for up to four players. It's a fantastic premise. Unfortunately, the inmates appear to have more freedom than the average IKEA customer, and considerably better access to weapons.
Want a prison where contraband actually matters and stealing from your cellmate might end with a badger rearranging your ribs? Read our Back to the Dawn review, where prison politics are considerably more dangerous than cafeteria employment.
Welcome to Prison. Please Ignore the Guards.
My introduction to prison life involved being escorted around by Officer Hayes, a man whose head flops from side to side with such enthusiasm that I genuinely expect him to develop a neck hernia before his next shift. The character models are dreadful, movement feels awkward, and conversations involve so much frantic hand-waving you'd think someone had just informed an entire Italian family that spaghetti is now illegal.
Visually, however, the prison gets one thing absolutely right: misery. Everything is grey, beige or some fascinating combination of the two. The cafeteria looks like it was decorated by a government department specifically instructed to eliminate happiness. It's magnificent. Except nobody seems interested in eating.
Instead, a guard offers me four cigarettes to clear cafeteria trays. Trays that somehow require clearing despite the apparent absence of anyone consuming a meal. Naturally, I accept. Four cigarettes for a little manual labour sounds reasonable. Little did I know I was about to discover an economy managed by someone who apparently studied finance in Zimbabwe.
Two Packs of Cigarettes and a Criminal Empire
Inside Job uses cigarettes as prison currency. Inmates can gamble with them, trade them and use them to obtain information. Brilliant idea. In a proper prison economy, cigarettes should represent power. A packet could buy intelligence, secure a favour or start a fight. Every transaction should involve risk.
Unfortunately, Inside Job has apparently received a humanitarian shipment containing seventeen billion cigarettes.
They're everywhere. I can wander into other prisoners' cells, rummage through their belongings and help myself to whatever happens to be lying around. At no point did anyone appear particularly upset about me treating their personal property as the contents of a charity shop.
Stealing can get you caught, so some enforcement exists. But beating up another prisoner produced no apparent consequences during my session. So let me understand this. Taking somebody's belongings is punishable. Beating the owner senseless? Apparently an acceptable alternative method of negotiation.
Before long, I had two entire packs of cigarettes and no conceivable reason to return to cafeteria employment. The guard was still offering four cigarettes to clear trays. Four! My good man, I am now a tobacco magnate. I could purchase your entire afternoon, appoint myself Minister of Finance and probably have enough left over to bribe the prison cat.
A black market needs scarcity. Scarcity creates competition, competition creates desperation, and desperation creates wonderfully terrible criminal decisions. When money is practically growing out of the concrete, the entire economy becomes a cigarette-themed treasure hunt.
If you'd rather escape prison with a friend than become its wealthiest cigarette merchant, A Way Out deserves your attention. It's among our 25 best crime games, alongside other criminal careers that don't involve compulsory tray collection.
Prison Life Is Appropriately Boring. Perhaps Too Appropriately.
The daily schedule is surprisingly convincing. Wake up at 6 AM, lights out at 10 PM, with escorted activities, cafeteria visits and yard time in between. When prisoners return to their block, everyone suddenly crouches down to gamble. The first time it happened, I thought somebody had poisoned the water supply and the entire population was attempting an emergency evacuation through their trousers.
Then comes the waiting. Five minutes standing around the cell block. Another few minutes elsewhere. Occasionally I throw balls around the yard or jump across cafeteria tables, something the guards apparently consider perfectly normal prisoner recreation.
Yes, prisons are supposed to be boring. That's rather the point. But there's an enormous difference between experiencing confinement and simply waiting for a timer. Quiet periods should encourage observation, preparation and calculated rule-breaking. Instead, I often found myself watching inmates clip through furniture and perform conversations with the physical enthusiasm of a man trying to land a helicopter using semaphore.
The routines exist. The tension that should make those routines fascinating hasn't fully arrived.
Solitary Confinement: Finally, Some Productive Crime
Then something wonderful happened. I was sent to solitary confinement for three minutes.
Rather than staring at the wall, I discovered I could loosen a screw. Hold E, release before making too much noise, repeat until the screw comes free. I managed it before my punishment ended. Now I could make a shank.
Absolutely glorious.
A punishment becomes an opportunity. An ordinary object becomes a weapon. The prison's attempt to control me has accidentally provided the means to become considerably more dangerous. From the authorities' perspective, this is a spectacular achievement in administrative incompetence. They locked me in isolation and I emerged with the ingredients for a stabbing instrument. If this is their rehabilitation programme, they might as well issue everyone a complimentary knife at reception.
The larger escape storyline also involves paying inmates for intelligence and obtaining a code to infiltrate a guard booth. Promising criminal preparation, certainly, but I didn't progress far enough to establish whether the complete escape demands careful planning or whether later security systems provide meaningful resistance.
Had enough of prison? Excellent. Time to commit the crimes that get you sent there. Our Best Heist Games ranking covers proper robberies, criminal crews and escape plans that generally survive until someone opens fire.
Should You Play Inside Job in Early Access?
There's genuine potential here, particularly for friends who enjoy turning an elaborate escape plan into an international incident involving three idiots and a stolen screwdriver. The current Early Access offering features one prison and cooperative play for up to four players, without controller support or integrated voice chat.
This was a limited solo session, not a completed escape or multiplayer assessment. Broad player reception also remains unestablished. What I can judge is the prison I experienced: rough animations, an absurdly generous cigarette economy and consequences that appear worryingly inconsistent. Yet the daily routines provide a foundation, and solitary confinement demonstrates how entertaining the underlying concept could become.
For now, I'd recommend trying the free demo on Steam before buying Early Access, especially if you're expecting a serious prison-escape simulation.
Inside Job doesn't need more contraband. It needs to make the existing contraband worth stealing, hiding and potentially getting your teeth knocked out over.
As for me, I've got two packs of cigarettes, a homemade shank and an entire prison population that apparently couldn't care less. And if Officer Hayes asks me to clear another fucking tray, I'm buying the cafeteria and firing him.
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