Prison Level

Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak!

"Zordoom Prison; a dangerous dungeon of dastardly denizens, death and destruction. A deadly den of devious desperadoes damaged by decades of uh, ...let's just say they're criminals."

— Captain Qwark, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

Prison is not a fun place. And yet, they appear in quite a few levels in video games. While there are other pieces of media that have an episode centered around prison, in games they seem to have special conditions. They could be a Stealth-Based Mission, as you must sneak past the guards in order to escape or bust out someone, or could be a No-Gear Level, where the player must get their equipment back after escaping their cell. Patrolling Mooks tend to be enemies in many of these levels.

Why the player character is in this setting can depend on the plot. Likely they have been captured and must break out. Either they are framed for a crime and imprisoned by the government, or have been captured by the villainous government and sent to their personal prison. Another scenario may involve the player character breaking into the prison to bust somebody out, who is also likely to have been framed. Yet another scenario may involve a Prison Riot where escaped convicts have busted out and the player character must stop them.

Variations of this include being set in a POW Camp, particularly in Military and Warfare Video Games, and playing as an individual or group trying to get a Living MacGuffin prisoner out, often involving either a Prison Riot or a Great Escape. Another may involve a Prison Ship with the prisoners being transported and a riot starting or said ship crashing in an unknown planet.

See also Prison Episode (where a television episode takes place in a prison) and Cardboard Prison (where the prison isn't really enough to hold the main characters).

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Examples:

Action-Adventure

• A Way Out's entire first act, ten chapters long, is located within a prison. Leo and Vincent spend this time setting up and planning their escape, with the full breakout occurring in the tenth chapter.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum: Much of the game qualifies as this, being set in the infamous madhouse. A good number of the levels are meant to be holding areas for the prisoners Batman faces.
• Batman: Arkham City ups the ante by turning an entire district of Gotham City into the titular super prison. The game proper starts with Bruce Wayne getting arrested and sent into Arkham City, whereupon he dons his cape and cowl to investigate just what Hugo Strange, the prison's warden, is up to.
• One of the later levels of Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain is the Eternal Prison, a vast time-distorted facility for individuals who have "transgressed the laws of the gods and man". Kain has to break in to find the incarcerated architect of the Hylden device — and given that the guards can easily warp space and time at the flip of a lever, it's no easy task. On the upside, the prisoners all have their eyes stitched shut, so they can't easily run away if Kain needs a quick drink to restore his health.
• Guacamelee! 2: At some point in the story Juan is imprisoned and escapes by turning himself into a chicken and escaping through the toilets.
• Just Cause 4: In order to complete the Sandstinger branch of missions, Rico must first spring Lanza Morales from La Mazmorra, an enormous prison complex beneath the desert.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Link infiltrates the dungeon of Hyrule Castle in order to free Zelda from her cell before Agahnim can cast her into the Dark World.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, before the Spirit Temple, Adult Link has to infiltrate the Gerudo's Fortress. If a Gerudo Guard spots him, he will be thrown in a cell on the very top floor of the fortress. This leads to a section where Link must do a stealth mission across the fortress and release the four imprisoned carpenters. Link is mandated to fight some of those guards when trying to free one of the handymen, and they can use a special spin attack that result in an instant Non-Lethal K.O. that sends him back to the prison, at which point that fight occurs all over again until that carpenter is freed. No matter how many times Link ends up in the prison, the guards don't take away his weapons.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The Forsaken Fortress is the first dungeon in the game and is revisited two more times. The first visit has Link be catapulted to the island in order to rescue his sister and other kidnapped girls but lost his sword in the process, so he must sneak past the guards and avoid spotlights. If he is spotted, he will be captured and thrown into a cell. On the second visit, with the Master Sword in hand, he succeeds in rescuing the prisoners and defeats the Helmaroc King, though during this visit, the guards and searchlights won't imprison him in that particular prison cell, but a lone Floormaster will. After the fortress has been cleared, it will sit abandoned, the searchlights will be disabled, and the monsters previously inhabiting the fortress will vanish, save for a few Keese and Rats, as well as the lone Floormaster that will still imprison him.
• Star Fox Adventures sees Fox McCloud captured and thrown into the Cloudrunner Fortress, where the player is required to retrieve the staff, which then allows Fox to run around the fortress while disguised as the guards.
• Tomb Raider III: One level of the "Area 51" mission ends with Lara being captured by guards. In the next level, she has to escape from her prison cell, find replacement weapons and equipment, and find the alien meteorite fragment she's looking for.

Adventure Games

• In Day of the Tentacle, Laverne is accidentally sent into a Bad Future in which Tentacles rule the world and humans have been reduced to the level of pets. As such, Laverne is immediately dragged off to the mansion's kennel — essentially a jail, complete with forcefields and prisoners dejectedly playing cards. Laverne is only allowed outside if she feigns illness or a Potty Emergency, the latter resulting in her being taken for a walk on the lawn like a dog... and she's explicitly warned that if she doesn't have an owner and nobody claims her, she'll be put down. The only way she can escape the guards and roam the mansion at will is by improvising a tentacle costume.
• Ghost Trick has two levels that involve a special prison. The first visit is a simple status check on a prisoner, while the second visit is split into two subtasks, first stopping the execution of said prisoner and second escaping while the power is out.
• Little Big Adventure:
  • Twinsen begins the first game as a political prisoner committed to an asylum, and breaking out of the asylum and returning home is the first objective of the game. There are various other asylums scattered through the game, and being knocked unconscious by one of the white Groboclone enemies will see him stripped of his gear and shipped off to the nearest one.
  • In order to cross the Hamalayi mountain range, Twinsen teams up with a group of anti-government rebels and helps them storm a prison in the mountains where their colonel is being held.
• Poptropica: Escape from Pelican Rock Island revolves around your character getting framed by an Identical Stranger and sent to a seaside prison. Throughout the days, you forge friendships with your inmates, barter items to get what you need and dig a tunnel to get out.
• Syberia: The World Before begins with Kate being imprisoned by an authoritarian government and doing forced labor in a mine.

Beat 'em Up

• Final Fight 3 starts with a visit of Guy to the office of his friend Mike Haggar, until a Prison Riot occurs in Metro City Jail where an explosion happens and various prisoners were freed. With that scenario, the first stage occurs inside the jail stopping enemies from escaping there and beating them up, with Guy, Haggar, and the newcomers Lucia (a policewoman who tells them about the riot) and Dean (a street fighter who knows who's behind the riot).
• Gotham Knights (2022) sends the player characters on a mission to Blackgate Prison in order to question Harley Quinn concerning the last case that she and Batman were collaborating to solve. Of course, given that law enforcement in Gotham has turned on the Knights following the death of Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne, the guards aren't going to just let the player characters in like they did with Batman; instead, you have to sneak in... and when Harley triggers a riot for fun and escape purposes, you have to fight your way out.
• Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage: In the game for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, the player can alternate between Venom and Spider-Man at certain points in the game. In the Spider-Man route, he goes to the police station to quell a prisoners' riot.
• In Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub-Zero, the sixth stage is named "Prison of Souls": a large penitentiary complex for "lost souls" that wander into the Netherrealm (the in-series version of Hell), overseen by a robotic guardian.
• In No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, the Rank #23 battle takes place on Prison Island, where Travis has to sneak in to assassinate its sole inmate: Cloe Walsh. The level is structured as the game's Stealth-Based Mission as Travis must sneak past the guards Metal Gear-style — on most difficulties, this is more of a suggestion since all getting caught results in is having to hack-and-slash your way through the level as usual, but it's practically imperative on Bitter difficulty as every mook carries a deadly machine gun.
• The Prison scenario of Paint the Town Red is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, involving the player starting a Prison Riot. Its exclusive enemy skins and weapons are available in the game's level editor, so there's a bunch of user-made levels that are more or less the same.
• The POW: Prisoners Of War arcade game (and it NES port) starts the player in a prisoner-of-war camp. However, despite the title, the player is actually an infiltrator, and was Captured on Purpose. You start by using some smuggled TNT to blow open the POW camp's jail cell, and proceed to kick a substantial quantity of ass on your way out to locate targets behind enemy lines.
• Streets of Rage 4 has the protagonists get locked up in the holding cells in the city police station in level 2, forcing them to bust out and fight their way through a prison riot that's currently taking place (in a bit of Artificial Brilliance, the cops and criminals are as hostile to each other as both are to you).

Fighting Games

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future has the prison Jotaro was locked in at the beginning of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders as one of its playable levels.
• In Street Fighter Alpha 3, one of the newcomers is Cody, who after freeing Metro City from Mad Gear gang, got addicted to fights, at the point his life went to hell and he got arrested and sent to prison, where eventually got freed and is still looking for fighting. With that said, it's obvious his stage is the Metro City Jail, or at least outside of it, showing a possible Prison Riot made by him.

First-Person Shooters

• BioShock:
  • In Bioshock 2, Subject Delta has to go to Persephone, who was previously used as prison by Ryan before being reused by Sofia Lamb.
  • In Bioshock Infinite, Booker has to go through Comstock House, which has been repurposed into a reeducation camp for dissenters.
• Borderlands:
  • The DLC The Secret Armory of General Knoxx for Borderlands has the Lockdown Palace area, which used to be a maximum security prison but Mr. Shank and his gang turned it into their hideout. Here's where Athena is located, and not only you get to fight Shank, but also his partner Chaz.
  • In Borderlands 2, the "Bloodshot Stronghold" level takes place in a gang hideout with a prison section where you find Roland, one of the original game's Vault Hunters, and a key player in the story.
• Call of Duty:
  • Call of Duty: "Dulag IIIA" is set in a POW Camp located deep in Austria, where Pvt. Martin, Captain Foley, Sgt. Moody, and a number of other 101st Airborne paratroopers must rescue Major Gerald Ingram, battling against dozens of German guards along the way. Of special note is that this is a Timed Mission, as the 101st must enter, rescue Ingram, and exfiltrate before German reinforcements can arrive and finish them off.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops: "Vorkuta" is set in the infamous Soviet Hellhole Prison of the same name. Here, Mason and his newfound ally Viktor Reznov, alongside hundreds of Russian prisoners, stage a Great Escape that also seeks to destroy the prison itself in the process. Ultimately Mason, with Reznov's help, manages to get out alive.
  • Call of Duty: Zombies: Call of Duty: Black Ops II Zombies brings us Mob Of The Dead, a map set on Alcatraz Island. The main plot of the map involves moving around Alcatraz to collect parts to build a makeshift plane to escape the island, but unless you choose to stay on the bridge for the rest of the game, you return to the island via electric chair. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 features a remake of the map called Blood Of The Dead, which features new areas to the map but also removes the ability to ride the plane to escape the island.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: "The Gulag" has Task Force 141 storming the titular Russian prison in search of a man known simply as Prisoner 627, later revealed to be a captive Price, and get him out. Roach, Soap, and Price successfully escape via air extaction, with the US Navy and Air Force destroying the Gulag in the process.
• Mission 6 of Dark Forces opens with the Rebel Alliance's informant, Crix Madine, being caught and sent to an Imperial Detention Facility on Orinackra. As such, Kyle Katarn is sent to rescue him before the date of his execution rolls around.
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy: Shortly after arriving on Dosuun, Jaden is captured by Imperial Remnant soldiers, sent to a prison complex, and has their lightsaber confiscated. The warden, Rax Juris, then approaches Jaden with an offer... he'll unlock their cell if Jaden agrees to be the prey in a round of Hunting the Most Dangerous Game.
• Dishonored:
  • After getting falsely charged with the assassination of the Empress at the start of the game, Corvo is imprisoned in Coldridge Prison and tortured in the hopes of forcing him to sign a confession of guilt. However, he's unexpectedly released from his cell by a guard in league with the Loyalists, allowing Corvo to either fight or sneak his way through the prison until he reaches the boat waiting for him just outside the prison.
  • During The Brigmore Witches DLC, Daud has to break into Coldridge Prison in order to rescue Lizzie Stride, leader of the Dead Eels and the owner of the only boat that can get him to Brigmore. Needless to say, security has been substantially improved since Corvo's escape.
• Duke Nukem 3D gets captured at the end of the second level. The next level, Death Row, starts in the electric chair.
• Half-Life 2 has both the chapters "Nova Prospekt" and "Entanglement" which involves you breaking into Nova Prospekt, a high-security prison that also functions as a Combine base to rescue Eli Vance who has been captured by them.
• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: The rebuilt Fort Schmerzen, the setting of the sixth and final mission in the game, has been turned into a stopover point for Allied Prisoners-Of-War, and houses a massive prison complex on its first floor housing dozens of American POWs. The first part of the final level has Lt. Mike Powell and other members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion freeing these POWs from German captivity, in order to get them to safety once Powell and the Rangers destroy the Fort for good.
• The Operation Na Pali Game Mod for Unreal Tournament has two instances of the main character being trapped in a prison:
  • The first takes place at the very beginning. After 046 lands on Harobed Village, he's sniped by a Skaarj. After a long monologue, he finally breaks free from it thanks to a prisoner breaking down the prison's energy lines.
  • The second comes near the end, when 046 is inspecting the remains of the Vortex Rikers. By this point he actually became a One-Man Army, when he tries to get out of the ship, he's ambushed, imprisoned and stripped of all his arsenal, which included the Instagib rifle. On the next level, a rogue Skaarj destroys the ship's energy sources and 046 is freed again.
• Quake II:
  • The apt-named Jail Unit takes place in a prison-like complex, complete with a detention center, cells, cell blocks, torture chambers, a guard house, lots of prisoners begging to be mercifully executed and so on. It's the area that prevents access from strangers to the mining and factory areas of Stroggos, as operations there are quite vital for operations on the planet.
  • The Strogg Fighter in the The Reckoning Expansion Pack is a glorified Prison Ship, complete with cells and guards keeping track of them.
• Unreal:
  • Unreal begins with Prisoner 849 escaping from a crashed Prison Ship. The manual proclaims she got jailed for a crime she didn't commit.
  • One of the Assault maps from Unreal Tournament (Rook) takes place in a castle where the attackers are left captive. Their objective is, obviously, to escape from it. The lore of the game says that the castle belongs to the game's Final Boss, Xan Kriegor, and the prisoners are there to "help him train".
• Frequent in the Wolfenstein series due to its setting:
  • The entirety of the first episode of Wolfenstein 3-D is about B.J. Blazkowicz escaping from a Nazi prison.
  • The first levels of the original PC version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein start with B.J. Blazkowicz escaping from being imprisoned on Castle Wolfenstein's dungeons. In the console versions, this level takes place after Agent One and Blazkowicz are caught by Helga von Bulow's forces.
  • Wolfenstein: The Old Blood begins with a botched infiltration mission where Agent One and Blazkowicz are imprisoned. Until B.J. battles against Rudi Jäger, B.J. cannot escape from prison.
  • Wolfenstein: The New Order:
    • The "Eisenwald Prison" level is set in one of Berlin's most notorious prisons, housing the Third Reich's most dangerous and prominent enemies. Blazkowicz must go there to free members of La Résistance and must sneak and later battle his way through prison guards and the robots accompanying them. Of note is that this level Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly, as B.J.'s activities are discovered just after he finds the captured resistance members.
    • "Camp Belica" is set in a Concentration Camp located in Northern Croatia, where the Nazis are turning Jews and other undesirables into slave labor under hellish conditions. Blazkowicz must find a man named Set Roth who can help the resistance unlock the secrets of the Nazi's advanced tech. Ultimately, Roth, with Blazkowicz's convincing, agrees and helps Blazkowicz instigate a Great Escape via captured mechs and vehicles, with many of the camp's prisoners fleeing alongside both of them and becoming resistance members themselves.
    • The final level involves B.J. and Catherine storming Deathshead's compound, specifically, its dungeon sections, to instigate a Great Escape and free the captured Kreisau Circle members from General Deathshead's grasp. However, rather than flee immediately, Blazkowicz then decides to end Deathshead's reign of terror for good, resulting in the Final Battle on the compound's rooftops.

Light Gun Games

• Silent Hill: The Arcade: Toluca Prison serves as one of the levels in the game, where the players need to traverse the prison while fighting off various monsters, including Greed Worms, and the Split Worm.
• The Walking Dead (Arcade): All four levels in the game, as it's about a group of survivors trying to escape from a prison overrun with walkers.

Platformers

• Aladdin (Virgin Games): The fourth level takes place in the Sultan's Dungeon. In this level, Aladdin has to escape from the dungeon while dodging bats, retracting spikes, swinging weights, the Palace Guards, and exploding skeletons. Sebastian the Crab makes a cameo appearance as a prisoner, as does a keyholding dog.
• Another World: Early in the game Lester gets captured by aliens. While escaping from prison, he teams up with an alien prisoner who stays with him until the end of the game.
• In Castlevania Legends, the player can access a secret stage named "The Dungeon" through Stage 5. As its name implies, "The Dungeon" is the usual prison-like section for Castlevania, with cells, skeletons in chains, and an Executioner as the stage boss.
• Croc: In the first game, the levels "Dungeon Of Defright" and "Jailhouse Croc" have a prison aesthetic, with spooky music to match. The latter is more explicit about it, taking place almost entirely in the dark and being filled to the brim with "executioners."
• Kirby: Triple Deluxe: The fifth stage of Royal Road takes place in a heavily fortified, gem-encrusted prison where the People of the Sky are held captive. Throughout the level, Kirby is blocked by doors that can only be unlocked with the freed prisoners' magic.
• Mighty No. 9 suddenly shifts gears from being an action-platformer, and has the player use Call instead of Beck for a pseudo-stealth mission, infiltrating a prison to meet with Dr. Blackwell. Unlike Beck who is equipped with a multitude of weapons, Call is equipped with a very weak stun gun.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction: After the Zoni inform Clank of Talwyn Apogee's, Ratchet must infiltrate Zordoom Prison, located on Planet Viceron, to free Talwyn and her robots, Qwark gives them a rundown on the schematics and plan beforehand.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart: Zordoom Prison makes a return, this time being the prison where Emperor Nefarious, Dr. Nefarious' Alternate Dimension counterpart, sends his enemies. Rivet must infiltrate it so she can rescue Ratchet, Clank, and Kit. The level climaxes with a Prison Riot, with former enemies, Goons-4-Less goons and robot pirates, break out and assist the heroes from that moment one.
• Sonic Adventure 2: The third level in the Hero Story called "Prison Lane" has Tails break into a GUN prison on an island to rescue Sonic, who was mistaken for Shadow. The levels feature robot guards that Tails has to blast through in his Tornado in order for the iron bars to open.
• Sly 2: Band of Thieves: "Jailbreak" is the fourth episode of the game where Bentley must rescue Sly and Murray from a prison in Prague run by The Contessa.
• Near the end of Stray, the cat is thrown into a prison cell set up by the Sentinels, alongside Clementine and B-12. Amusingly enough, the cat is able to set themselves free from the tiny, structurally unsound cage the Sentinels put them in. The player then guides the cat to escape prison with their companions in an extensive stealth segment, that also goes awry.

Puzzle Games

• Deadly Rooms of Death:
  • King Dugan's Dungeon is ostensibly an entire game set in a prison, although the dungeon has expanded from the originally planned nine levels to twenty-five, and most of it is now being used for other purposes.
  • In Journey to Rooted Hold, Beethro must rescue Halph from a goblin prison. However, Halph has made friends with the goblins and is horrified when Beethro kills them.
  • One level of The City Beneath is the torture chambers of the Slayers' prison, but it's empty of prisoners, and Beethro is sneaking in for the purpose of setting off bombs that will bring down Slaymasters' Hall, killing all the Slayers in one go.
  • In Gunthro and the Epic Blunder, Gunthro and his enemy, the Tuenan Captain, are both imprisoned by the rock golems. Gunthro has to take advantage of the golem guard bringing him food in order to escape.
  • In The Second Sky Beethro helps Tendry to rescue his countrymen, who were taken captive in Tendry's Tale and are being held prisoner by the Patrons.
• Scribblenauts Unlimited features the level Payper N. Penitentiary, a run-down prison with missions about helping prisoners escape and helping the staff. One major mission there involves Maxwell needing to break out.

Roguelike

• In Sunless Skies, one of the ports you can visit is Piranesi, a notoriously eldritch Penal Colony located deep in the wilderness of Elutheria. You can visit at any time you like in order tour the facility and learn all about the four wardens' various methods of reforming their prisoners... but breaking one of the rules of Piranesi during a tour can result in you being imprisoned here yourself. Doubly unfortunately, it's impossible to leave the prison until you've permanently altered your personality in some way — to the point that all exits will loop back on themselves until you've changed your stats.

Role-Playing Games

• Arcanum has three of these:
  • After learning that the dwarves of the Black Mountain clan were banished, the Player Character is sent to a penal colony known as "The Isle of Despair" to see if any of the clan members are there or if the prisoners have any more information about them.
  • If the player opts to side with the Dark Elves, they are sent on a quest to break one of their agents, Tollo Underhill, out of The Pit, a prison in Dernholme.
  • J. T. Morgan, the best lockpicker in the world, is trapped in a Tailor-Made Prison cell in the dungeons of Caladon. Players who wish to receive master-level training in lockpicking must take a quest to deliver his tools to him so he can free himself.
• Chrono Trigger: No matter what happens at the end of the first trial, Crono is locked up in prison and must escape before he is executed.
• Virtually every game in the Dark Souls series has one of these. The first game opens with the player thrown into the Undead Asylum, which acts as a prison to house the Undead who have gone Hollow and lost their sanity. The sequels have The Lost Bastille and Irithyll Dungeon.
• Late in Dragon Age: Origins, your attempt to rescue Queen Anora from Arl Howe's manor ends with you being cornered by Ser Cauthrien, and unless you can manage the herculean task of outfighting her, you're captured and imprisoned in the dungeons of Fort Drakon. From here, the story can progress in two ways: either you can wait for your companions to rescue you — in which case a team of your choosing has to break into the fort — or you can break out on your own.
• The entire first act of Divinity: Original Sin II is set in Fort Joy, an island prison colony where the Divine Magisters corral any Sourcerers they manage to capture. The protagonist and all six recruitable companions are Sourcerers and begin the game already captured, so their first major objective is to find a way off the island to freedom.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind: During the main quest, your contact with the Dissident Priests is arrested by the Tribunal Temple and taken to the Ministry of Truth (a hollowed out moonlet once hurled at Vivec city by the Mad God Daedric Prince Sheogorath and turned into a floating prison. You need to sneak/fight your way through the Ordinators to rescue her, then give her a magic scroll to teleport out. Or, if you have a high ranking within the Temple faction, you can order most of them to stand down as you stroll right up to her cell.
  • Oblivion: The Dark Brotherhood quest line has you sneak into the Imperial City prison through secret passageways to assassinate an inmate. It doesn't need to be a Stealth-Based Mission, but you get a bonus for not killing any guards.
  • Skyrim: The quest "The Forsworn Conspiracy" ends with the Player Character being framed for a series of murders and sent to Cidhna Mine, a mining complex where members of the nationalist-terrorist organisation The Forsworn are used as slave labor. During the next quest, "No-one escapes Cidhna Mine", they are stripped of their gear and must either side with or kill the Forsworn's leader to engineer an escape.
• Fable: The Hero has to rescue his long-lost mother from the Big Bad's prison and is inevitably captured in the attempt. His Great Escape involves plenty of Controllable Helplessness, a footrace, a stealth minigame, repeating all of the above, and regaining his gear and Will powers.
• Fate/Grand Order: The event "Vengeful Demon's Wail at the Prison Tower" has the protagonist being trapped into a prison while dreaming and having to cooperate with The Count of Monte Cristo to escape it. Then it turns out that it was the Count himself who trapped the protagonist here, and the final battle of the event is several consecutive boss fights one after the other without breaks as the player traverses through the prison tower to escape, with the final fight being the Count himself.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy V:
    • The first instance in this game is a downplayed example, where your party briefly lands in Karnak Prison after being mistaken for being in cahoots with a Wolf Man that attempted to turn off the Fire Crystal. Here you run into Cid. The party is soon let out afterwards, but they get to revisit said prison and make off with its treasures after the Fire Crystal is destroyed.
    • The party is captured by Exdeath's minions upon arriving in Galuf's world. Galuf then has to break them out, leading to the first encounter with Gilgamesh.
  • Final Fantasy VI: In occupied South Figaro, Locke sneaks around town until he discovers that a former general of the Empire, Celes, is locked up. He has to rescue her and both must then leave where she was jailed.
  • During your visit to the Gold Saucer in Final Fantasy VII, a massacre in one of the attractions results in Cloud and co being falsely accused of murder and incarcerated in the prison camp below the Saucer. As you soon find out, nobody bothers guarding the place because the desert surrounding it can't be safely crossed on foot, so you're essentially trapped here while you go about tracking down the real murderer. Once that's over with, you have to earn your freedom by participating in the Gold Saucer's Chocobo races.
  • Final Fantasy VIII: After the failed assassination attempt, the player characters must escape from the multi-level prison.
  • In disc 2 of Final Fantasy IX, Princess Garnet's attempt to negotiate with her mother Queen Brahne goes horribly wrong when the queen simply has her arrested, imprisoning Steiner and Marcus in the palace dungeons — essentially in a giant birdcage — while Garnet has her eidolons extracted. Fortunately, Marcus is able to swing the cage back to the ground in a minigame, allowing them to break out and fight their way through the guards to freedom. Unfortunately, Zidane, Vivi, and Freya soon arrive to reveal that Garnet is due to be executed, forcing the united group to venture into an even deeper level of the dungeons to rescue her before time runs out.
  • Following the attack on Bevelle in Final Fantasy X, the entire party is captured, jailed, and sentenced to death in the Via Purifico, an extended dungeon infested with Fiends. For good measure, the party is split up and flung into the labyrinth at different points, leaving you on your own until you can find the others and make some headway to escaping... and you start off playing Yuna, too.
  • Final Fantasy XII: After the fete in Dalmasca, the current party is jailed in Nalbina Fortress and must find a way to retrieve their weapons and then escape.
• Knights of the Old Republic:
  • After collecting three out of the four pieces of the star map, you're ambushed by the Leviathan and packed off the ship's brig, where you, Carth, and Bastilla are interrogated for information before being left to wait for Darth Malak's return. However, you're able to plan your own breakout in advance by setting aside one of your companions as your ace in the hole, allowing them to break you out — setting the stage for your escape from the Leviathan itself.
  • On Korriban, you can be offered a mysterious box by a smuggler and told to deliver it to Tatooine without opening it. Actually opening it leaves you trapped inside an ancient Rakatan Mind Prison, forcing you into a battle of wits with the eons-old prisoner — who will break out and steal your real-world body if you lose.
• The Legend of Dragoon:
  • Early in the game Dart's sweetheart Shana is kidnapped by Sandoran forces and locked up in Helena Prison, forcing him to break in to rescue her. Along the way, he also meets up with Lavitz, a POW who is in the process of staging a breakout, and the two become swift allies. Naturally, this level ends with a boss battle with the monstrous Warden Fruegel.
  • Later in Disc 1, Sandora conquers Bale and puts King Albert in Helena Prison to await execution... requiring Dart and his allies to break in again to rescue him — this time featuring a boss fight with the pet monster that Fruegel likes to feed his inmates to.
• Lost Odyssey sees the party locked up within the brig of the White Boa. The player is then forced to sneak through the ship to regain their equipment.
• Mass Effect 2: The mission to recruit Jack sends you off to Purgatory, a brutal Prison Ship run by the Blue Suns mercenary group; Jack is one of the prisoners here, and the warden has been paid to release the notorious biotic supercriminal into your custody. Unfortunately, after letting you explore Purgatory for a little while, Warden Kuril tries to double-cross you in order to cash in on a bounty — forcing you to fight your way to a control room and release Jack from cryo in order to take advantage of the ensuing chaos to escape.
• Paper Mario 64:
  • Part of Mario's adventure in Koopa Bros. Fortress has him getting falling for a trap and getting dropped into the fortress's dungeon, where the Koopa Bros. are holding some Bob-ombs who tried to rebel against them. It's there that Mario meets his third party member, Bombette, who helps him blast open a hole in a wall to escape. Later, after Mario defeats the Koopa Bros., they fall into the same dungeon (where the hole from earlier has been boarded shut).
  • Much later, while traversing Bowser's Castle, Mario runs into prison cells holding the party guests from the start of the game. He can even rest in some of them.
• Persona 5's final Dungeon is the Prison of Regression, representing how the people of Japan are willing to give up their free will in order to maintain societal order, which ended up creating Yaldabaoth. Four of the targets the Phantom Thieves have stolen the hearts of (Kamoshida, Madarame, Kaneshiro and Shido) appear as well, having been sent there after their hearts were stolen. To emphasize this, the shadows are dressed like prison guards.
• Salt and Sanctuary has the Red Hall of Cages, a massive prison complex on the Nameless Island which is built to mimic the real Red Hall back in the living world. It is a horrific prison where, according to legend, the guards spent so much time torturing the prisoners that both groups lost their humanity, and the line between guard and prisoner was lost completely. The boss of the area is a horrible amalgamation of torture machinery and human bodies known as the Tree of Men, turned animate and hostile by the tortured souls of the prisoners of the Red Hall.
• Shadow Hearts: From The New World: The party breaks into THE Alcatraz to rescue Al Capone who ended up there in the aftermath of the mafia wars in Chicago. Then Lady appears and things turns for the weird very fast.
• Shadows Over Loathing: The Federal Prison is a location in Government Valley, the last area before the Final Boss. There, in preparation for the final battle, you can get powerful weapons and stat-boosting perks by bringing crackers (gift certificates for the prison chiropractor) and cigarettes to the prisoners. If you have Molly Buttons as your companion, this is where you meet her girlfriend and add to her companion vignettes which, if completed, give the option to defeat the Final Boss.
• Pandemonium from Wild ARMs qualifies. Your party get captured by the demons and imprisoned in separate parts of the prison part of the level. First you get control of Hanpan and unlock the place, then you must navigate your party to the entrance, using switches to clear each other's paths. Once your party is reunited, the obligatory boss fight takes place, then you can proceed to the last part of the level.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the protagonists are eventually tasked to infiltrate the Agnian penial colony Li Garte to break out Ghondor. What they have to do is fly under the radar of the guards by playing along with their tasks. It mostly goes along as planned, then however Shania betrays the party and Moebius N and M show up, starting a major Wham Episode.

Stealth Based Games

• Splinter Cell: Double Agent has Sam Fisher going undercover as a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic to gain the trust of a domestic terrorist organization the NSA is planning to stop before it detonates red mercury devices on US soil. In order to do so, Sam must take on a false identity provided to him and he is sentenced to Ellsworth Federal Penitentiary for a string of bank robberies across the Midwest. There, he befriends a young militant member of the organization he needs to infiltrate, and together they plot a jailbreak using a riot as a cover for their escape. In doing so, he gains the trust of the terrorists and they recruit him into their ranks.
• Thief Franchise:
  • In the 3rd level of the first game, "Break from Cragscleft Prison", Garrett learns that his fence, Cutty, has been arrested by the Hammerites, and must sneak into their prison complex via an abandoned mineshaft in order to free him.
  • Pavelock Prison is an optional level in Thief: Deadly Shadows, accessed by having Garret be knocked unconscious in front of one of the city guards. He wakes up in a cell and must figure out how to break out.

Strategy

• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: Chapter 10, Prisoner Release, is a variation in that Ike and his team has to break into a prison to help free PoWs captured by Daein.
• Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew: The Isle of Penance is an island that is used as a prison by the Inquisition.
• StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm: After Kerrigan discovers that Raynor is still alive on a Dominion Prison Ship she goes to rescue him. Along the way, she infests the other prisoners to use as cannon fodder against the guards.
• Warcraft III uses them as a Baseless Mission:
  • Inverted in the second-to-last Night Elf mission, where Tyrande decides to free Illidan the Betrayer from his prison, killing the Watchers who stand in her way. In the expansion, this results in Maiev Shadowsong (Illdan's jailer) bearing a grudge against Tyrande (who maintains that she did what she had to do).
  • The expanded prologue sees Thrall and his warriors trapped by Murlocs under the island who intend to sacrifice them to the Sea Witch. He breaks out and escapes to the surface, rescuing other captives along the way.
  • After being arrested for collaborating with the Naga, Kael'thas is busted out by Lady Vajsh, who helps him escape the dungeons. As there's no place left for the Blood Elves in the Alliance, they escape to Outland.
• XCOM 2: With the "War of the Chosen" Content enabled, your soldiers can sometimes be kidnapped while on missions and taken to a prison camp to be interrogated for information on the Resistance. you must undertake a prison break mission to get them back into your squad and prevent them from sharing any sensitive intel.

Survival Horror

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent:
  • Daniel is ambushed by a large group of enemies and wakes up in a cell. Daniel needs to escape quickly before the Shadow takes control of it.
  • Justine starts in a cell, which is actually part of a dungeon where she has to determine whether to help or kill three individuals.
• The last act of Dead Island takes place in a prison on an island east of Banoi. The heroes are not allowed to return to Banoi and must navigate the prison, which is filled with the world's most wanted terrorists, in order to find Ryder White (who had been helping them throughout the game) and hopefully escape the islands.
• Silent Hill:
  • Silent Hill 2: One of the later levels in the game is Toluca Prison, where James Sunderland meets Eddie Dombrowski. In the prison, James needs to find a lighter, a horseshoe, and some wax, to make a makeshift door handle. Beyond that door, the environs start to get rather... chaotic.
  • In Silent Hill 4 (or Silent Hill 4: The Room), the third section of the game is the Water Prison, a circle-shaped structure modelled after a Panopticon. During the first half of the game, Henry's objective is to explore the prison to release Andrew DeSalvo, its former warden, and open the electrocution/execution chamber located right next to the cafeteria/kitchen. In the second half of the game, Henry has to escort Eileen through the same prison, while avoiding pursuer Walter Sullivan and DeSalvo's malicious ghost.

Third-Person Shooters

• Halfway through Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, Jango Fett has to break into notorious asteroid Penal Colony Oovo IV in order to capture convicted drug dealer Bendix Fust as part of a complex gambit to hunt down the suppliers of a major drug cartel. Unfortunately, another bounty hunter triggers a riot in order to capture Fust herself, forcing Fett to break out in the next level... then when he finally manages to arrange for a truce with this rival hunter — Zam Wessel — prison security destroys his ship. So, in the final level, Fett has to shut down the prison's external defences and steal a new ship that all three of them can escape aboard: a Firespray-class vessel that Fett dubs Slave I.
• The Suffering: The game starts in Abbott State Penitentiary on Carnate Island, which is quickly overrun with Malefactors soon after Torque is placed in his cell. A large amount of the game's time is spent in the prison, though Torque's adventure will also have him explore other areas on the island.
  • From the sequel, The Suffering: Ties That Binds :
    • The game begins with a flashback to Torque's days in Eastern Baltimore Correctional, doing time for manslaughter. After a short chat in the exercise yard, he and his friend Miles fall foul of the crime lord Blackmore, resulting in a fight that somehow escalates to massive riot... and before long, the Malefactors arrive on the scene to make things worse.
    • In the present, following a frantic journey across Baltimore, you end up right back in the prison — by now hit hard by the Malefactors and infested with the physical manifestations of crimes committed against the inmates.
• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End:
  • The second chapter, "Infernal Place" involves Nathan, Sam, and Rafe bribing their way into a Panamanian Prison to look for clues to find the pirate Henry Avery's treasure. On the way back from climbing an old prison tower where Avery's first mate was held, Nathan gets into a fight with another inmate that is broken up by a warden who demands a cut. Rafe then kills the warden, which causes the guards to shoot at and chase the three, which results in them running through the prison onto the roofs, where Sam is seemingly killed.
  • The fifth chapter, "Hector Alcázar", has Sam tell Nathan about how he escaped from a prison. He was cellmates with the titular drug lord, who organizes a Prison Riot in order to escape, where the two get into a gunfight with the guards while escaping. After they escape, Alcázar demands Sam find Henry Avery's treasure for him or be killed. This story turned out to be a lie, though. Hector Alcázar was actually killed in a shootout beforehand and it was actually Rafe who got Sam out of prison.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney Investigations 2: The Imprisoned Turnabout involves Edgeworth investigating a murder committed inside a prison.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• Ghost Recon Wildlands: Bolivia's rugged San Mateo province is home to two of Santa Blanca's most notorious prisons. Prison Rosario was a sleepy rural farming village before Santa Blanca literally walled it off under orders of El Pozolero, erecting barbed wire fences and guard towers to oversee the community turning it into a prison for Bolivian citizens suspected of aiding the Kataris 26 rebel movement. Prisoners there are forced to work the coca fields just outside the village's perimeter. To the north, in a massive box canyon surrounded by Cliffs of Insanity is La Carcel Del Pueblo, a massive open-air cell block for prisoners nestled into the walls of the canyon with the only way in-or-out on the ground tightly controlled by Santa Blanca forces. One mission the Ghosts have to undertake to free San Mateo from Santa Blanca's grasp is to make contact with a Kataris 26 leader wasting away in the Hellhole Prison who has vital information on the cartel buchon's identity. Far to the southeast, in La Flor de Oros province is La UNIDAD's F.O.B. Serpeiente, a maximum-security correctional facility patrolled by General Baro's highly-trained and well-equipped military forces. There, the Ghosts need to make contact with General Baro's former aide, a UNIDAD lieutenant who defected to La Résistance when UNIDAD agreed to a ceasefire with Santa Blanca that he considered a Deal with the Devil.
• Grand Theft Auto 2: The "Alma Mater Return" mission revolves around intentionally going to prison, stealing a guard uniform, and sparking a riot.
• In Jailbreak (Roblox), you start off in prison if you choose to not play as a cop. You must escape prison whilst evading the prison guards, those who chose to play as cops. The incentive to escape prison is well...to get to the other things the game has to offer, such as the various types of robberies and items to access.
• The second Special Assignment in LEGO City Undercover has Chase visiting Albatross Prison to interview a prisoner about Rex Fury's escape and investigate Rex's cell.
• Mafia II: "Time Well Spent" is a Deconstructed Trope version of this, as the player is essentially enduring a long period of Controllable Helplessness for most of the level, and is simply defending himself from would-be attackers the rest of the time, and only finally able to relax once he begins training to defend himself once he gets acquainted with Leo Galante. No Great Escape here, with Vito serving six years in prison.
  • Mafia II: The Betrayal of Jimmy: "Jimmy's Vendetta" begins with the titular former Mafia hitman pulling off a Great Escape during a Prison Riot that he himself arranged. Ultimately, Jimmy manages to escape through the prison's sewers unscathed, thanks to the riot distracting most of the guards, and Jimmy himself beating up any who remain.
• Spider-Man (PS4): One sequence of the game has Spidey swinging in to help rein in a massive prison break on the Raft engineered by Doc Ock in which a number of his most infamous enemies escape custody.
• In Watch_Dogs, after entering with a gun in order to get arrested, Aiden is locked up in the Palin Correctional Center, enabling him to seek Raul Lionzo and saving before escaping.
• Yakuza 4's first chapter of part 2 introduces a new playable character, Taiga Saejima, who had transferred to Okinawa Penitentiary No. 2 after serving 25 years on death row. When Goh Hamazaki, a fellow prisoner, tips him off about the truth of the events that landed him in jail, they both plan a daring escape. The player gets to control Saejima in a limited open area, followed by a linear beat-em-up level to break out of the prison and learn Saejima's combat style.

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