Prison Boss: Prohibition is a smart, playful evolution of a very specific kind of VR experience
If you've ever dreamt of running your own black market business—one where you brew moonshine, roll cigarettes, and stash wads of cash in hidden compartments—all while dodging nosy cops and answering shady phone calls, then Prison Boss: Prohibition is your fantasy in motion. As a follow-up to the beloved original, this sequel doesn't just capture what made the first game so fun—it refines and expands it in meaningful, clever ways.
Now set against the gritty, bootleg-filled backdrop of 1920s New York, Prison Boss: Prohibition moves the action from a cramped prison cell to the bustling docks, swapping orange jumpsuits for fedoras and trench coats. And it's all the better for it.
While the original Prison Boss VR had you running your contraband empire from within a jail cell, Prohibition opens things up significantly. Your new headquarters is a booth on the industrial docks of New York during the prohibition era—a perfect setting for the kind of fast-paced, underground enterprise you're running.
The game doesn't waste much time explaining your backstory or diving into narrative depth. You're just The Boss, and your job is simple: buy raw materials, manufacture illegal goods, deliver orders to shady clients, and avoid the long arm of the law. It's all framed in a cheeky, almost cartoonish tone, with exaggerated characters (those egg-shaped people are back!) and playful world design that feels alive and reactive to your actions.
The booth becomes your world—a place of constant motion, hidden compartments, ticking clocks, and twitchy paranoia. Whether it's rolling cigs under the desk while a cop strolls by or stuffing crates full of booze before the next phone call comes in, there's always something demanding your attention.
At its core, Prison Boss: Prohibition is a crafting sim. Think of it as Job Simulator meets Breaking Bad, with the added chaos of a time limit and the ever-looming threat of discovery.
You start with the basics, hand-rolling cigarettes or brewing basic batches of moonshine. Each item has a physical crafting process that's intuitive in VR and surprisingly satisfying. Whether you're twisting paper with thumb and forefinger or carefully pouring liquid into labeled bottles, the tactile interaction is where the game shines. These aren't just button presses—you feel the work you're putting in.
The loop is compelling. You take phone calls (yes, literal old-school phones) to receive orders, each with their own delivery deadlines. This adds a layer of time management to the already frenzied crafting. You'll be multitasking constantly, grabbing a new batch of materials with one hand while organizing completed goods with the other. The clock's always ticking, and the police are always watching.
One of the best parts of the game is how the booth upgrades over time. As you earn money from your deliveries, you can purchase better storage: drawers, hidden cabinets, and even decoy shelves. These upgrades not only expand your inventory space but also serve a practical purpose in hiding contraband and money during surprise inspections. It adds a welcome strategic layer, do you spend your hard-earned cash on faster tools, or more clever ways to evade detection?
There's something inherently thrilling about it all. When the alarm starts buzzing and a cop starts walking by your booth, your heart rate spikes as you scramble to hide everything. That same moment where you slide a fake drawer closed just as he looks your way is pure VR gold.
A big addition in Prohibition is the introduction of cooperative multiplayer. On paper, this sounds like a dream, imagine running a black market business together, handing off moonshine, splitting deliveries, and stashing loot for each other. In reality, co-op is a bit more compartmentalized than expected.
Each player runs their own booth in parallel, and while you can toss items between each other (materials, finished goods, maybe a bottle or two of something spicy), you can't physically enter or interact with each other's spaces. This means no helping each other hide goods during a bust, or teaming up to tag-team an order. It's more of a shared solo experience than a fully collaborative one.
That said, it is still fun. There's joy in yelling across your headset as you both rush to fulfill orders, trade excess items, or just vibe while chaos unfolds. And for those who enjoy working under pressure with a friend—without needing deep co-dependency—it still adds a nice new flavor to the gameplay.
You can jump in with friends or get matched online with strangers, which is a pleasant surprise and works well thanks to the game's smooth matchmaking.
Quest 3's mixed reality capabilities are put to decent use here with a unique mode that lets your contraband booth pop into your living room. It's a clever concept—your furniture becomes part of the world, and those same egg-shaped cops and NPCs wander around your real space like weird little Sims.
It's not the main way I wanted to play the game (and you can absolutely ignore it), but it's a neat optional feature that shows the devs are thinking beyond traditional VR. Still, I found the booth more immersive in full VR mode, where the stylized environment and period details really shine.
There's something about being inside that cartoonish version of the 1920s—watching steamboats chug by, hearing the ambient dockyard sounds, and seeing the hazy neon signs—that just feels right for this kind of game. MR is fun, but it's not quite as atmospheric.
Graphically, Prison Boss: Prohibition uses a clean, cel-shaded art style that perfectly matches the tone. It's colorful, exaggerated, and immediately readable. Every object you interact with is bold and distinct, making even a cluttered booth feel manageable. The stylized environments, rusty metal booths, flickering signs, suspicious alleyways—feel pulled from a Saturday morning cartoon version of Boardwalk Empire.
Character design is a standout, even though it leans into weird and surreal. The “egg people” NPCs are back, with minimalistic faces and goofy animations. They never speak, but they grunt, shuffle, and react in a way that gives them surprising personality.
Sound design helps reinforce the game's loop, with satisfying pops, clinks, and sloshes for every crafted item. The soundtrack leans on jazzy, noir-tinged melodies that evolve depending on the level of heat you're facing. There's an understated brilliance to how the music swells as you approach a delivery deadline or scramble to hide goods from a patrolling officer.
Prison Boss: Prohibition isn't a reinvention of the wheel—but it doesn't need to be. It's a smart, playful evolution of a very specific kind of VR experience. It takes the core loop of the original—craft, sell, hide, repeat, and layers on just enough new mechanics, flavor, and chaos to make it feel fresh.
The addition of a larger setting, co-op functionality, and mixed reality support gives the game more flexibility, and the booth customization and time-pressure systems deepen the strategy without making the game overwhelming. It's still frantic, still silly, still surprisingly tense—and that's exactly what it needs to be.
If you loved the first game, this is a clear upgrade in almost every respect. If the original didn't click for you, Prohibition likely won't change your mind as the core DNA is intact, and the game still thrives on repetition, pressure, and tactile play. But for fans of the first, this is a worthy sequel and one of the better VR sims on Quest 3. Thanks for reading!
The game was reviewed on a Quest 3 via a promo copy provided by the developer. Prison Boss: Prohibition is available on Meta Quest and PCVR.
