At this point one can only assume that Two Point City is inevitable. The fictional metropolis has now played home to a Hospital and a University Campus, and while we might see Two Point Mall or Two Point Airport first, I’m almost 100% convinced that it’s all building towards a new city sim. And no bad thing, either. The current crop feels far too po-faced and straight-laced, and if developer Two Point Studios can bring the same effortless charm to a city manager as they have to their previous games – as well as Two Point Museum – they could be on to a guaranteed winner.
But we’re not here to talk about what may or may not happen in the future. Rather, we’re very much talking about the past. Two Point Museum is a game set in a very modern museum that deals, as museums do, with antiquity. Dinosaur skeletons, insects encased in amber, frozen cave men, fossilised, erm, floppy disks. Yes, we’re not above a chuckle in Two Point Museum, especially when “relics” from the 90s like dial-up telephones are displayed next to 60-million year-old skeletons. Nothing like kicking me when I’m down, I suppose.
As with previous Two Point games, Two Point Museum is an incredibly British game, brimming with charm and genuine humour, designed to be very easy to get into while also providing enough of a challenge to keep you awake. It’s more laidback than Hospital or even Campus, which can at times make it all feel a bit too chilled-out, but that can be a major benefit these days.
It all begins when you take over as curator of Two Point Museum, a prehistory museum in the bustling city. Your job is to manage everything from staff to exhibits and even décor, which means you’re also responsible for sending out expeditions to gather artefacts and relics which you then display for the admiration of the paying public. It’s all well tutorialised as an advisor pops up to guide you through a series of campaign objectives. It’s not always super clear how to proceed, but I never got stuck for than a few moments before I either figured it out or the game dropped a hint.
At first, you have only one museum to run. From an empty room with a single display you begin by hiring a Prehistory Expert who will take care of the exhibits, but who will also head out into the field to retrieve them. Soon you’ll install ticket booths, donation stations, vending machines, and hire customer service personnel, janitors, and security guards. You’ll need to train them all, leading them down specialised paths as they level up and unlock new training slots.
For example, the museum will soon require experts trained in survival, surveying, piloting, and advanced restoration, and no one can do everything. At least, not right away. Your staff are as integral as the displays themselves, so a staff room is essential alongside a training room. Then you need a gift shop, a coffee shop, decorations and partitions. There’s a certain science to funnelling your guests a certain way, wowing them with dazzling displays before guiding them, now parched and hungry, to the vending machines and gift shop.
In order to remain financially sound, people must be exploited in the nicest possible ways. Buzz is the currency upon which your museum thrives, while money is just something you need to pay the staff and improve your facility. But Buzz can only be generated by giving the people what they want, installing interactive info-boards, decorations, and more and more extravagant relics. The second museum I unlocked (there are three altogether) was a Marine Life Museum, and although the broad strokes remained the same it required different experts and a slightly different thought process behind displaying the artefacts.
Children simply won’t learn from boring displays, which prevent you from generating the third kind of resource: Knowledge. You want people to be learning, as this combined with Buzz will make them spend more money and time in the museum. The final currency, Kudosh, comes from positive reviews and the overall happiness of guests, and is used to unlock new decorations and décor items. Once you start tinkering with the floor and wall coverings, building separate areas for thematic displays, and monitoring the well-being of your artefacts, you’ll start to attract special customers.
Yetis, for example, just exist like real people in Two Point City, and are more discerning than humans. Collectors will arrive to offer money for well-kept relics, and VIPs can raise the profile of the museum, which in turn brings in more money for exhibitions – as do promotional deals that you can make with local businesses to advertise things like rock concerts, or sell branded merchandise in your gift shop.
All of which is in service to getting your hands on more and more relics. This is achieved by sending out expeditions using your helipad, to distant lands filled with danger and mystery. Each point of interest on the map must be unlocked after meeting certain criteria, and can then become a destination to send your experts to, sometimes accompanied by other members of staff. They’ll earn XP while away, but can sometimes become injured or infected with some exotic disease such as “tar foot” and you’ll need to fix them up.
Returned relics are removed from their crate like you’re opening a loot box, and you never know what you’re getting until you look inside. Sometimes they repeat and can be sold, sometimes they will be part of an existing display like a large skeleton. Some of them are blatantly funny, like the aforementioned ring-dial phone. Each is worth the trip.
In fact, it’s not just the artefacts that are funny. Two Point Museum is genuinely amusing, making me laugh out loud more than once. From the radio station where an enthusiastic Deejay talks to an increasingly erratic expert, to the tannoy announcer whose dry British humour and sarcastic quips are delivered in such a deadpan way that some of her jokes didn’t even register in my mind until I found myself laughing a moment later.
You’ll work towards getting high ratings for your museums, which will unlock more for you to manage, each with their own challenges and themes. Should you wish to, you can jump straight into a sandbox mode and do whatever you like without needing to follow objectives and hit predetermined goals.
Anyone who has played a game in this series before will know what to expect from Two Point Museum. It’s more of them same in some ways, but the running of the museum has unique elements such as the Buzz and expedition systems that set it apart, just as Hospital and Campus feel very different despite being quintessentially Two Point Studios games. On occasion you might argue that it’s a little too laid-back for it’s own good, but that hardly feels like a criticism. Once again Two Point Studios have delivered a bright, fun, and likeable management sim that is simple to get into it, but deep enough to keep you invested – and I can’t wait to see what they do next.
