PrisonBaLL  ›  How to Play

How to Play PrisonBaLL

PrisonBaLL is seven-a-side football played in a prison yard by people with nothing left to lose. There are no referees, no stoppages and no substitutions. Everything below is how the game actually works — not how a normal football game works.

The sport

Two crews of seven meet on a floodlit yard: one keeper and six outfield inmates each. The ball is a cast-iron weight, the arena is concrete, and the only authority present is whoever is still standing.

Every inmate is scored on eighteen attributes in three groups of six, and both modes use the same set:

Each of the four positions — goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, attacker — is judged on its own weighting of those eighteen, so the same inmate is a different player depending on where you put him. There is no single "overall" that hides the rest: a quick winger with no stamina is a genuinely different problem from a slow one who never tires, and the game will let you find that out the hard way.

Solo and teamwork sit deliberately next to each other in the mental group. An inmate high in one and low in the other is not badly made — he is a specific kind of teammate, and building a crew is largely about deciding how many of those you can carry.

Two modes, one universe

The same yard, the same 40 crews and the same four divisions — seen from two very different heights.

Neither mode is the "real" one. Manager Mode is a strategy game about scarcity — too little money, too few bodies, too many weeks. Player Mode is a career game about one person surviving a decade. They share a world; they do not share a save.

The league

Forty crews are split across four tiers. Three of them are proper divisions of twelve; the fourth is a four-crew pool at the bottom that feeds the rest.

In Manager Mode you start in Division 3 — not at the bottom, but close enough to it that a bad first season hurts. The full crew list, tier by tier, is in Crews and Divisions.

Formations

Seven on the pitch means one keeper and six to place. Six presets ship with the game, and the numbers read front to back after the keeper:

• 1-3-2-1 — three at the back, two in midfield, a lone target man. The safe one.
• 1-2-3-1 — two defenders, three attacking midfielders, one striker. Territory over safety.
• 1-2-2-2 — balanced and thin everywhere. Punished by a strong midfield.
• 1-3-3 — three defenders and three attacking midfielders, no true striker.
• 1-1-3-2 — a single holding midfielder behind three, two up top. High risk.
• 1-3-1-2 — three at the back, one holder, two strikers. The counter-attacking shape.

A shape is only as good as the bodies in it. Playing an inmate out of position is allowed and sometimes necessary — it is simply worse, and the game will not stop you.

Squads and bodies

The game considers seven players a functional squad — exactly enough to field a team with nobody spare. It aims you at ten, split one keeper, three defenders, three midfielders and three attackers. The three above seven are not luxury; they are the difference between an injury costing you a match and an injury costing you the season.

Common questions

Is it free?

Yes. Both modes run entirely in your browser and cost nothing. There is no download, no install and no account. The studio makes money from its own banner system, and player data is never sold.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. Both modes run in a mobile browser, and Manager Mode can be installed to the home screen as a PWA so it opens like an app.

Can I play both modes at once?

Yes — they keep separate saves. Running a crew in Manager Mode does not touch an inmate's career in Player Mode, even though both are set in the same league.

How long is a season?

Long enough that squad depth matters and short enough that ten of them fit inside a career. In Manager Mode you will feel the fixture list through injuries and fatigue more than through the calendar.