Two Point Museum Review

Two Point Studios has quickly become one of my favorite developers since the release of their first game, Two Point Hospital. I’ve been enamored with management sims since I was a kid, with games like RollerCoaster Tycoon, SimCity, and The Sims being among my favorite games. Something is soothing about spending a few hours immersed in a world you’re in control of. Most games have you control a character; these games have you control the world. When Two Point Museum was announced, I was pleasantly surprised. I can’t think of any prominent developers that have done a museum sim, and I knew that Two Point would put their quirky spin on it.

Campaign

The campaign mode in Two Point Museum has fewer levels overall than previous games, but the levels it does have are much more involved. You start in Memento Mile, a prehistoric museum featuring fossils and items from the ice age. We then move on to Passwater Cove to create aquariums and catch fish. Beyond that, the game gives you the choice of the haunted Wailon Hotel, the scientific Bungle Wasteland, and the platform in the sky featuring alien artifacts, Pebberley Heights. Each museum teaches you new tactics that you can use to bounce back and forth between the levels. I liked the non-linear path where I could switch to something else whenever I was bored with a particular museum. The levels are lengthy, but their progression always gives you something to work towards.

Gameplay

Staff

Experts

I had to break down the gameplay in Two Point Museum because it’s a very intricate game to attempt to explain in just a paragraph. The different types of staff to help you manage your museum are at the heart of the gameplay. Depending on your exhibits, you have various experts who will help you. This list includes Prehistory, Botany, Supernatural, Marine Life, Science, and Space. Each can restore your exhibits by dusting your fossils and watering your plant exhibits, for example. They’re also crucial for going on expeditions to find new exhibits, analyzing exhibits in the Analysis Room to gain knowledge, and running guided tours. They’re the most essential staff member and can be trained in a specific field to be more effective, depending on what you want them to be good at (as can the rest of the staff members).

Assistants/Guards/Janitors

The rest of the game staff are a little more generic. Assistants take tickets and handle any customer service kiosks you may have. They run the cafeteria and the gift shops you use to make money. Janitors are the ones who make items in the workshop, perform upgrades and perks on exhibits and items, and generally keep the museum litter-free. Janitors can also put out fires if you have any, which happened constantly on the science level. Security Guards are prominent in the game as they aren’t just patrolling the floor. They collect all the donations from the donation buckets, which is how you make the bulk of your money. They also man camera rooms to look out for one of the many criminal groups that will come up through holes in the floor or even in the toilet. Trying to keep the criminals at bay was one of the most enjoyable parts of the game.

Keeping Staff Happy

As in past Two Point games, keeping your staff happy and paying them what they’re worth is essential, or they will start to get unhappy. Each has similar needs as guests regarding bathroom use, eating, and stamina. A staff room with food, drinks, couches, and entertainment is crucial to having a successful, happy staff. Each has special positive and negative traits, like increased movement speed and qualifications like +20% ticket selling speed, that make them unique. There are even Robo-Janitors and Robo-Guards later in the game that don’t have a salary, which you can use to your advantage. I almost feel like there could have been some separation with the janitor and maybe a maintenance person, as the janitor does many different things.

Expeditions

Expeditions are one of the main gameplay elements in Two Point Hospital. You send the required staff members off to find new exhibits with a helicopter. You can choose between Speedy, Safe, or Detailed. It’s a risk and reward scenario. A speedy expedition will be done in half the time, but it usually damages the helicopter and only increases the survey level by 5%. A detailed expedition takes longer but increases the survey level by 15%. I usually went with Safe unless I was trying to gain survey levels quickly for better quality exhibits. Staff members will be unavailable for the duration of the expedition, and some even become MIA depending on the events that might be going on, such as a cave collapse. You can acquire materials, exhibits, workshop blueprints, and perks. It does get tedious sending people back and forth constantly trying to get the things you want and need. This can be alleviated by buying multiple helipads, but the price is steep at $100,000.

Exhibits

I loved the variety in the exhibits in Two Point Museum. There are regular fossils, fish, and a plant that turns someone into a vampire. This is where the personality of the development team shines through so much. There’s even stuff like a floppy disk fossil, a lava lamp, an evergreen wiener tree, and a lagoonian creature. It’s fun to find all these different exhibits and display them all together. Plenty of decorations add to the exhibit’s buzz rating, which contributes to the enjoyment of the museum guests. Placing info boards around them allows guests to learn more about the exhibit. If you don’t have enough of them, the PA announcer will let you know over and over again. It’s vital to place donation bins, as that’s the primary way you’ll be making extra money.

My favorite thing about the exhibits is that they all play differently. The fossils are simple; you plop them down and get dusted occasionally. The Ice Age stuff requires cooling to keep it from melting. The botanical exhibits require watering and can die, but some require cool or humid atmospheres. The fish require different types of aquariums depending on what they are. Supernatural exhibits have you caring for ghosts. Those are some of the most interesting exhibits because they have needs you need to meet, such as wanting music or a specific type of decor. The alien exhibits come down from the sky sometimes, and you have to put them together like puzzles to get them to take their final form. There are interactive displays to entertain people, like the Prehistory Playground, where the kids can play.

Finances

Managing finances in Two Point Museum is much more difficult because of how much is happening simultaneously. You’re paying for expeditions and components of rooms and exhibits to create buzz and generate more income. It’s a push and pull situation. It got dire on the Bungle Wasteland level, where I took out tons of loans and tried to keep up with everything the game wanted me to accomplish. It wasn’t until I started plopping down all kinds of exhibits and putting in extra gift shops and kiosks that I started digging myself out of the hole. It’s easy to fall into debt in the game because it’s such a fine line between profit and deficit. One wrong move could set you back years in-game. Coincidentally, my museum in Pebberly Heights had the opposite problem. It was printing money.

Presentation

I’ve always appreciated the graphical aesthetic of the Two Point games. A cartoony art style works well for this type of game. It’s an outlandish game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and the decorations and exhibits certainly feed right into that. Environments are bright and colorful. The staff changed their outfits for the workshop, wearing full fireproof suits. In the aquarium, they wear full diving suits to walk on the bottom and take care of it. Experts have different attire, depending on what type of expert they are. There are plenty of different wallpapers and tiles to create the museum you’ve always envisioned, along with many decorations. The music is soothing in the background, and the PA announcer is witty unless she’s trying to get you to fix something you haven’t noticed. She’ll tell you over and over. The menus are easy to navigate; you can find what you want in seconds. This is essential in a simulation game.

Conclusion

I loved Two Point Museum. It might be my favorite Two Point game. This game took things in a new direction and packed a ton of gameplay into a cheaper game. I might have missed some things, but there are so many details that it’s hard to cover them all. I was surprised at how much value and fun I got from this one. It does have its tedious moments, but it’s well worth playing.