Penitent is a solitaire game where players take the role of Quaker reformers, tasked with designing a visionary American penitentiary in the early 19th century.
Players will draw a floorplan for their model penitentiary and determine how it is governed by resolving a sequence of event cards. Your model will be evaluated at the end of each era based on its influence among reforms and architecture, funding, and the impact it has on the moral fiber of its inmates. Players will expand and renovate their blueprint at the conclusion of each era. Your penitentiary must endure three eras of events to win.
Will your penitentiary adhere to the Auburn reform's silent system or Pennsylvania's bold solitary confinement system? Will your inmates achieve rehabilitation through ceaseless labor or intense religious instruction? Will your penitentiary serve as a model of reform or be instructive only for its failure.
—description from the designer