How long is one year?

How long is one year in Prison Architect in terms of

game days
real life minutes when played at normal speed

Bonus points if you know the ratio between normal speed and max fast forward speed.

2 Answers

As stated in the release notes for version 19, and assuming it has not been changed since:

... one year sentence = 120 game hours (5 days)

In real time that is 2 hours because 1 game hour = 60 real seconds, but only for a small map.

If you look in the save game file for medium and large maps a TimeWarpFactor is added, with a value of 0.75 and 0.5 respectively, which changes how fast time passes.

Therefore:

 Game hour Real minute Game year Real time --------- ----------- --------- ---------
Small map: 1 = 1m 1 = 2h
Medium map: 1 = 1m:20s 1 = 2h 40m
Large map: 1 = 2m 1 = 4h

So when played at normal speed one game year can range from 2 to 4 hours depending on your starting map size.

As to the increased speeds on a small map, the >> speed is about 30s to one game hour (2x) and the >>> speed is about 12s to one game hour (5x). So you can divide down the times given above as appropriate.

According to a similar question on Steam, one year is: