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Hard Time (Prison Sim) Tips & Tricks: 5 Advanced Hints to Survive Southtown Correctional

As promised, this is the second part of our Hard Time strategy guide, and in the first part, we provided you three basic survival tips that are ideally must-read tips for beginners. We’ll be getting a bit more advanced here, but first, we should remind you that Hard Time is an MDickie title for iOS and Android, and it’s set in a prison facility called Southtown Correctional, where the inmates (all 100-plus of them) are bad and the wardens even worse. So without further ado, here are the rest of our Hard Time tips and tricks.

1. How To Remain Sane In Southtown

Your sanity meter is very important, because if it goes to zero, you’ll suffer a nervous breakdown and be unable to control yourself for about ten to fifteen seconds in-game. That could get you into trouble for randomly attacking people, which often happens during breakdowns! In order to stay sane, there are many things you can do while in jail, such as working out in the exercise yard, interacting with your friends, or, if you can find one, having a smoke or a chug from a beer. Sleeping, however, is the best way to regain sanity, although it’ll be much better if you sleep on an actual bed.

While it’s obvious that fighting or having something taken from you will drop your sanity meter, there are other, random events that may also have an impact. For example, we discovered that picking up the phone only to receive a Simpsons-esque prank call (e.g. “I’m looking for Amanda Huggankiss”) could greatly reduce your sanity.

2. Make Friends

Another key way you can keep your sanity while locked down is by making friends. Some characters may ask you to deliver something or talk to someone, and if you accomplish the “mission,” you’ll be friends with both of them. You also make friends if someone says you did a good job by taking out their enemy. You may also find yourself having a prison girlfriend or boyfriend, though for some reason, this dings your Reputation, especially if your partner is of the same sex!

3. When Nature Calls

If you see your inmate walking around in a scrunched-up position, that means he or she has got to relieve himself/herself somewhere. Normally, this would be in the bathroom, though some cells have toilet bowls where you can go and prevent your sanity and reputation from going down if you end up crapping your pants. MDickie warns you in the game description that you may have to heed the call of nature, and this is something you should take seriously – aside from the embarrassment doing a number on your sanity, the wardens could bust you for relieving yourself in public!

4. Killing Someone Could Get Your Sentence Extended Big-Time

In the real world, you’d be serving a life sentence if you kill someone in prison. But in Hard Time, you can get your sentence potentially extended from the usual 60-80 days to a good 120 days if you get caught killing anyone! If you do your best to behave yourself, you don’t need to worry about this, but as we said earlier, you may need to fight back if someone picks on you first.

5. Whatever You Do, Don’t Get Caught

You may be attacking someone or selling an item for money or snatching something from someone – it’s all good, as long as the wardens or security guards don’t catch you while at it. Even smoking a cigarette or drinking a beer (both of which increase your sanity meter, as mentioned earlier) could earn you the ire of those in control, so be sure to keep a low profile at all times!

Emmanuel

Wednesday 20th of April 2022

@Christabel, No,you can be a prison warden

Christabel

Friday 2nd of July 2021

Does the game continue when you finish your sentence?

Gamer pro

Tuesday 4th of April 2023

@Christabel, no but if you walk around the yard a warden will see you're just doodling around and will say "since you have nothing else to do how will you like to be a warden" saying yes is kinda pointless since there's no benefits other than holding wepons freely and it's also minuses your reputation points by 10

Rosalina

Thursday 25th of July 2019

When is the new update for Android so you can be able to arrest or start a conversation with people. Because when I caught an inmate (I was a warden) holding a weapon or putting something in fire, I would beat them up and try to arrest them for doing that. So I clicked "G" and then "T" to arrest them but nothing happened or worked. So I would be the one to get arrested even though an inmate had a weapon and literally the inmate was beating me up even though I was a warden. That means I really want to arrest the inmates for doing something wrong. If I can't arrest an inmate for doing something wrong, literally what's the point in having me become a warden. I want to become a warden or police officer.

Gamer pro

Tuesday 4th of April 2023

@Rosalina, I think you can arrest on iPhone but not on Android I was on a site some minutes back where iPhone users were arguing with andriod users that you can arrest by pressing G+T which generally puts them in a random submission in Android