Review – Two Point Museum (PC)

An Artefact Worthwhile

During the late nineties PC gaming was a treasure trove of management and tycoon styled games. The debatable king ‘Rollercoaster Tycoon’ was my gateway drug into this genre. I flirted around trying other business simulators and found very few that could even hold up to the aforementioned king. One of those games that did capture my attention was ‘Theme Hospital’. A game that thrived on wackiness in a mundane environment.

Fast forward to modern day and the UK’s very own ‘Two Point Studios’ are using the soul of ‘Theme Hospital’ as a mission statement. Their first release was a spiritual successor ‘Two Point Hospital’ and was followed by ‘Two Point Campus’. Both brought the absurd to the boring with great gameplay to boot. Museums are the setting for ‘Two Point Studios’ third release. Let’s see if the excitement and craziness translates into ‘Two Point Museum’.

‘Two Point Museum’ is split across two game modes with a career and sandbox mode. Both of these gameplay modes in all intensive purposes are the same. Sandbox gives you parameters to adjust the game to make it a more personalised experience and in my opinion more fun. Career mode will have you chasing very specific goals of staff satisfaction and visitors per month for certain exhibits, while managing the business elements of your museum. While in my sandbox experience I just set myself the goal of increasing the buzz rating as high as I could without running out of money. However that was my experience, sadists out there can ramp the difficulty of sandbox mode through the roof if so desired.

Despite my love of the sandbox mode in this game and others of its genre, its quite difficult to learn the mechanics without a little direction. The mechanics of building your museum, range from incredibly simple and intuitive to a little more intense and micro manage heavy.

In the early hours of the career you spend a lot of time with the expedition feature. This is your main way of getting exhibits. By sending a collection of your staff members on their way to the helicopter pad and into the great unknown to uncover your museums killer artefact. This mechanic plays out on a map screen with several locations that you can chose from with varying risks and rewards. Each location has certain variables that can happen, some good some not so good. The strategy is selecting or training staff members to tackle these variables to make sure the expedition is a smooth as possible. 

The expedition takes place in game time so you can manage the museum whilst your brave staff risk life and limb for your next exhibit. Upon returning you are presented with a loot box like screen to see what your staff have secured for you with differing rarities on all items. This system is great and scratches an itch that insidious mobile and “Triple A” games have created for me in brilliantly addictive ways without bankrupting me. It creates a gameplay loop where you want to keep acquiring new exhibits to boost your museums cultural cache.

The exhibits themselves give you the drive to keep uncovering them. They all ooze character and creativity. An example of the pre-historic exhibits is you start with dinosaur bones and fossils noticing that some of the fossils looks like floppy disks. Then before you know it you’re uncovering time-gates with cave men. It’s not just your natural history with zany curveballs either. The game offers six very distinct themes for uncover-able exhibits with specific mechanics to keep them maintained.

This is where it is critical for you to play the career first. ‘Two Point Museum’ has five playable locations all of which teach you about the different themes and the mechanics that go with them. My personal favourite being the supernatural museum that is clearly very heavily inspired by a certain horror hotel. Taking the supernatural theme as an example. While on expeditions for the amusing cute yet creepy artefacts, hauntings and curses can occur. Haunting ghosts can scare and put visitors off from the museum, however they can also be captured to become part of the museum. Its relatively easy to get the hang of and becomes very entertaining although not as intuitive as just your standard expeditions.

Moving on to the last themes introduced in the games career, science and space. The exhibits from these themes I would not have understood without the railroaded goals of career mode.  In my opinion they require too much work and micromanaging to be fun. I found myself avoiding these two themes as I wasn’t getting the same dopamine hit from all the extra steps. I also found the exhibits a little less fun than the other themes the game had to offer. Saying that I’m totally aware that this was a me problem and other players will get a real sense of reward from micromanaging these exhibits into something beautiful.

During the career pop up museums appear as mini scored challenges. Typically a basically finished museum with one glaring issue. The glaring issue being the mechanic the game is teaching you and will be scoring you on. The first one introduces thieves into the mix and teaches you how to combat them. As far as teaching you about the game I loved these small challenges and personally wished there were a few more to prepare and test me.

Finally I will cover the building of said museum. Like the previous ‘Two Point’ games you build your museum on a grid system. You have access to a plethora of walls, floors and rooms to show off your exhibits. It’s incredibly simple to put a museum together using the tools provided. However when adding or removing some walls I personally experienced a little jank, however this is a very minor gripe. 

You will also be decorating your museum with a suitable large selection of scenery to boost the buzz of your exhibits and to make the location better looking for you. More scenery can be unlocked by getting knowledge on exhibits and themes. I enjoyed this progression system as it allowed me to focus on the pre-historic and supernatural themes while getting rewards that go with the exhibits I enjoy.

All in all the game is very similar to the previous entries in ‘Two Point Studios’ catalog. It is safe to say if you enjoyed them you will enjoy this. The major new feature of this game is the discovering exhibits through expeditions rather than just buying items needed or wanted. For me it really does emulate that 90’s feel games like this exude. While successfully bringing that spiritual zaniness from ‘Theme Hospital’.