Lite · Android · version 0.69.0
Bars or Badge Lite, the 2D game
The whole game on any phone from Android 8.0 - every room illustrated, both careers, offline against AI or online with other people.
Persistent prison-life RPG · Lite for Android · 3D for Android and Windows · free
A prison-life RPG: choose the inmate or officer career
Play Bars or Badge, a free prison-life RPG with inmate and officer careers. Compare Lite for Android and the 3D test builds for Android and Windows.
Build a life on either side of the bars.
Most phone games open their hand immediately: an advertisement before the first move, a timer telling you to come back in four hours, a chest you can buy, a leaderboard full of people who bought more chests than you did. Bars or Badge does none of that. It gives you a person, an institution of a thousand residents, and no final turn.
Two versions, one institution
Bars or Badge Lite and Bars or Badge 3D.
Both are the same prison and the same two careers at Northstar State Penitentiary: an inmate or an officer, 1,000 residents, and no final turn. Pick the one that suits your device, or play both.
3D · Android and Windows · version 0.7.0 · test build
Bars or Badge 3D
The same prison as places you walk through - the cells, the tiers, the dayrooms and the yards, and the officer's home outside the walls. An early test build: expect rough edges, and tell us about them. The finished 3D game is planned for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC and Android.
Choose a side
Two careers. One institution. Neither of them ends.
Inmate
You walk in with nothing. Earn a job, food in your locker, a name people know across the dayroom, and someone who will stand with you when it goes bad. Work toward a court release over a long career - or try the escape almost nobody makes.
Officer
Forty-eight staff for nine hundred and fifty-two people. Run the count, walk the tier, write the reports that follow you - and decide what to do when somebody offers you a shortcut. Retire clean, or find out who was building a file on you.
Why it is different
A whole prison that keeps living when you put the phone down.
A thousand people, not extras
Every resident has a name, a job, a history and an opinion of you - and they remember what you did.
Choices that cost something
Every half hour you make one real decision, and you see exactly what it changed.
No final turn
No score screen and no reset. Your career runs as long as you keep it alive.
Play alone or together
The full game offline against AI with no account, or a shared online institution with other people.
Free, with nothing to buy
No ads, no store, no currency. Just the game.
Screens
From the current builds.
Bars or Badge Lite on an Android phone, and Bars or Badge 3D from its current development build.
Bars or Badge 3D
The rest of the arcade
Five more worlds, each with its own voice.
One More Knock
There is a door on your porch that was not there yesterday. Knock on it.
Probably Weather
Every spoon in Building C points north. Somebody has to file this.
Please Take a Number
You are number 03. The bell is about to change what that means.
Static Club
Four receivers, five bands, one broadcast nobody can source.
Unclaimed Baggage
Tall teal, dented, rerouted, and it sounds like paper. You have four claim tags.
Get the games
Free. No ads. No account needed to play alone.
Every version is a direct download rather than a store listing, and each one is kept in one place on our server: the Lite on the Games website, the 3D builds here. Android asks once whether to allow installs from your browser, and Windows warns that the 3D build comes from an unknown publisher. Each file lists its exact size and SHA-256 so you can check that what you downloaded is what we built.
Lite · Android 8.0 or newer · 0.69.0
Bars or Badge Lite
For a standard modern phone take the first; if it will not install, take the second. Both are the same version.
Bars-or-Badge-0.69.0-arm64-resumable-test.apk · 147,460,988 bytes
SHA-256 5e3ad60bb99fffdab68f9a314f738d080aa6b073472f5a6094976008b39903cd
Bars-or-Badge-0.69.0-test.apk · 169,519,161 bytes
SHA-256 33218e1ada9a203e87247ab656232c0bd91f46e284f3a7b115651663c9244e3d
3D · test build · 0.7.0
Bars or Badge 3D
Android needs a 64-bit (arm64) phone and about 3.5 GB free to install. On Windows, unzip the whole folder anywhere and run BarsGame.exe: it needs 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, a graphics card with DirectX 11 or later, and about 7.6 GB once unzipped.
BarsOrBadge-3D-Android-v0.7.0.apk · 1,654,952,771 bytes
SHA-256 6a03eb9be125078ae95d0a33d55543a373a887af0c231920b6f4f98689c07a9f
BarsOrBadge-3D-Windows-v0.7.0.zip · 1,418,079,448 bytes
SHA-256 1d4b01021be8bca1049cf46de4714102dffdd5913af9e83a37e87b810d589be3
New in Lite 0.69.0 and 3D 0.7.0: Your online character now has a generated life story: a brief and chapters tied to the personality you choose, your character's name and body, and what happens to them. Choosing a different base or completing the personality questions refreshes the story. Family visits, family support, completed classes and officer career milestones feed the character's lived history.
Bars or Badge Lite 0.69.0 is version code 75, package com.autosecurelogin.barsorbadge2d, built against API 36 with a minimum of Android 8.0 (API 26), and signed with the project's test certificate (SHA-256 f607c2afc5c62627e33c72588e4210698ded626be6f97cba2a5812ce184d38b1) under APK Signature Schemes v2 and v3. It installs over Lite 0.68.0 and keeps its careers. It installs beside the old Bars or Badge 0.61 rather than over it, so a 0.61 offline career does not carry over.
Bars or Badge 3D 0.7.0 is the Unity game, version code 7, package com.autosecurelogin.barsunity.dev: a development build for arm64 Android that installs over the previous 3D test build, and an unsigned release build for 64-bit Windows. Both versions play against the live match server, 0.67.0.
Not on Google Play and not on any app store. Nothing in either version can be bought today: commerce is in test mode, live charging is off and Play Billing is not enabled, so the currency packs and mail tokens in the catalogue are not chargeable.
What you should know before you install
- The game is not on Google Play. Installing it means allowing an APK download from a website, and Android will warn about that. Some people will not do it, and it is better to say so than to hide it.
- None of these builds is store-signed. Android treats them as apps from an unknown source, and a future store-signed build will not upgrade in place over them. The 3D Android build is a development build, and the 3D Windows build is not code-signed, so SmartScreen asks before it runs.
- The Lite draws its people from 96 stock figures, one for each sex, stock body and skin tone. Hairstyle, face shape and cosmetics are saved with your character but not drawn into the scene yet.
- Nothing can be bought. Commerce is in test mode, live charging is disabled, Play Billing is not enabled, and checkout is hidden from the normal build. Any pricing or currency-pack language on this site would be a promise, not a product.
- Schedule advancement for a joining player and organization-dependent local actions fail closed with an on-screen explanation. A commissary purchase made on a joining player's phone does not reach the host yet, so the host gives the money back while the item stays.
- The screenshots: the Lite's officer's house captured from 0.68.0 on an emulator and the rest from 0.67.0, the build before it, and 3D 0.6.0 from the build's own test runs. Neither version of this release has been through acceptance on a physical phone yet.
- The 3D builds are large: the Android APK is 1.65 GB and runs only on 64-bit phones, and the Windows build is about 7.6 GB once unzipped.
- Server push notifications do not reach Lite 0.69.0 yet.
- Online, the Lite's officer is at home only for the morning before the count; the evening at home is offline in the Lite, and in 3D both ways.
Questions
Straight answers.
How much does it cost?
Nothing. Both games are free, with no ads and nothing to buy.
Do I need an account?
Not to play alone - offline is the whole game. A free AutoSecureLogin account is only for the shared online institution.
What does it run on?
Lite runs on Android 8.0 or newer. The 3D test build runs on 64-bit Android phones and on Windows 10 or 11.