The creators of Two Point Museum, Two Point Studios, is an independent game studio founded in 2016 in the United Kingdom. It was created by former employees of Bullfrog Productions, known for its work on classic simulation games such as Theme Hospital and Theme Park.
The studio’s founders, Ben Hymers, Mark Webley, and Gary Carr, aimed to create games that combined elements of humor and engaging gameplay. The studio’s first game was Two Point Hospital, released in August 2018. The game is a spiritual successor to Theme Hospital and challenges players to manage a hospital, build different departments, treat patients with unusual diseases, and develop a medical facility. The game received positive reviews for its graphics, humor, and depth of gameplay. In 2021, the studio released Two Point Campus, in which players can manage a university by creating courses, constructing buildings, and caring for students. The game was also well received by critics and players alike.
Two Point Studios continues to develop their ideas and concepts, creating unique and exciting sims that attract the attention of both old and new fans of the genre. Two Point Museum is a new museum management simulator in which players can create and manage their own museum complex, displaying various exhibits and organizing exhibitions. Let’s check it out together!
This is our Two Point Museum PC review.
The game itself continues the line of Two Point games, in which you are the manager of an entire complex industry. In the current game, players take on the role of a museum manager, the previous manager of which has disappeared and left you with the mess. Two Point Studios took the recipe of their previous games and improved upon it. And, while Two Point Museum is not a revolution in games of this genre, but at least a big step forward.
If in previous games the management was not so complicated and allowed you to relax, in the museum version you will need a very good focus on a lot of small things. The game provides you with a large toolkit for construction and management, from simple choices of flooring and wallpaper patterns, places for installing relics and hundreds of decorations, reaching complex and multi-level relics and exhibits to show off.
The game begins, like all previous Two Point Studios’ games, with a training mini-campaign, in which you will be guided through the main steps that you must follow to create a successful, profitable museum. Starting with searching for relics and exhibits on trips, ending with the arrangement of various rooms and zones.
You will be faced with a variety of tasks, differing both in their complexity and in the level of interaction, to manage a complex of museums containing different thematic exhibitions.
The game’s tutorial campaign gives you basic knowledge, with which you will further delve into the intricacies of museum management. That includes setting prices for tickets, drinks and snacks, gift shop products, placing exhibits, setting up routes for excursions, searching for new exhibits and decorating the halls.
And also researching the exhibits themselves, developing new entertainment zones and training staff. As was the case in the previous games, the main focus is your exhibits and entertainment centers. Each exhibit has its own characteristics and rarity, its own needs for decorations and conditions for revealing their full power.
Each exhibit has a level of rarity, buzz and a level of knowledge, these parameters determine its value and effect on the visitors and the museum at large. All these parameters can be increased, for starters, through research. Having received an artifact, you can put it on display in your museums, sell it, or give the artifact for research, which will give you a new decorative item and increase your knowledge of the exhibit. However, such artifacts are destroyed, keep this in mind before you give one up!
Entertainment centers are obtained by building them in the workshop (a building in the game itself), and are needed so that children also gain knowledge and increase the overall parameter of joy in the museum. However, I noticed that these centers are used not only by children, so it’s worth keeping an eye on them.
After all, visitors will leave their invaluable feedback after visiting your museums, and they take everything into account. No, I mean it quite literally, EVERYTHING. From wallpaper and decorations to how your museum is furnished. Doors for staff, common passages stylized for different eras and themes, decorations, from prehistoric to botanical and space, wallpaper and types of flooring suitable for different exhibits, billboards with information that increase knowledge about the exhibits, donation baskets…
And also various snack machines and devices for museum security. In game, you have to get involved in micromanagement at a significantly improved level compared to the Studio’s previous games. Setting up walkways for visitors, hallways for workers, security cameras and speakers with advertisements, all of it will take a TON of time but… It’s also quite interesting and engaging.
You can furnish each exhibit separately, highlighting it with specific decorations, or making it an entire separate room. Micromanagement in the game is brought to a really high level, and for good reason. At first, I placed a dozen exhibits in 1 room, decorating them hastily, turning the room into a hodgepodge of everything and anything at once, but visitors did not really like it. After an hour and a half I discovered that all the same ten exhibits could be placed and decorated in accordance with the themes in the museum, each decorated with separate items, and visitors were quite happy to see them.
But a couple more artifacts for the museum are already on the way, and once again you need to prepare places for them, include them in the excursion program and enjoy watching the staff work around them. This level of micromanagement is present in everything in the game, the arrangement of exhibits, the payment of salaries to employees, the indication of which jobs an employee goes to and which should be ignored, what prices will be in your kiosks, ticket prices, gift shop products and much more.
It might seem daunting, but the overall convenience has also received a similar level of attention. Each element is hidden in a convenient window containing useful information and comfy controls. This is just heaven for a player like me, I love to delve into the little things. Especially if these little things determine whether my museum will survive or not, because everything and everyone in the game costs money. And creating a successful museum that brings profit and fame is extremely difficult and time-consuming, but it is worth it.
After about 20 hours of playing, I could look at my huge museum, with an extension nearby, in which everything and everyone was set up for the arrival and fun of visitors, everything was beautifully arranged, decorated and collected by theme… and I was happy.
In the new game, players will no longer see dozens of similar maps with minimal differences. Now each museum has its own theme, which means that the locations have become unique, although their number has decreased. First of all, players will have to work with the exhibition hall dedicated to prehistoric times. Then the curator will be offered to try their hand at the marine and paranormal museums. Each of them will have its own unique decorations, rooms and exhibits.
For example, in the marine museum, the main focus is on catching rare fish and building aquariums. And to organize a paranormal exhibition, you will have to hunt ghosts. In the first two games, returning to familiar maps often turned into a routine with monotonous automated processes, which is why few players reached three stars. However, now “backtracking” has acquired a new meaning.
As you play, you will be able to unlock new regions to search for artifacts, as well as various decorations and rooms. Returning to your museums, you will be able to expand the buildings and open completely new exhibitions. In Two Point Campus, each university has its own unique atmosphere, which radically distinguishes this part of the game from the previous ones. Here, it will not be possible to combine, say, a school of magic and an academy of spies under one roof. Each thematic museum requires a special approach to management.
Exhibits can have neighborhood bonuses, special conditions of maintenance and unexpected features. For example, a cursed doll can scare visitors so much that they immediately want to go to the restroom. And at the sight of a dinosaur skeleton, visitors to the exhibition begin to yawn, and this negatively affects their impression of the exposition. The game encourages players to use a creative approach to solve such problems. So it’s time to put your management skills to work and start developing a business plan!
In Two Point Museum, each museum needs its own antiquities expert. A hired hero like Indiana Jones will go on dangerous expeditions and bring back valuable artifacts. The riskier the location, the more valuable the reward. However, in order to not lose your archaeologist, you need to carefully prepare for each mission. At the initial stages, the expedition points will be relatively safe, and the main danger can only be dirty boots or a fracture. But as the team progresses, an experienced pilot, a survival expert, and even a security guard will be needed. Players will have to hire and train personnel with the appropriate skills to save people and money.
The season also plays an important role. In some locations, dangerous seasonal storms may occur, so sometimes you have to wait for suitable weather. But you can take a risk and send a team on an expedition, despite the danger. If the team is well selected and all the risks are taken into account, then there is nothing to fear!
Traveling for artifacts is mostly automated, but sometimes your direct intervention is required. During expeditions, special events periodically occur where you have to make a choice. Successful completion of such events can bring a new artifact or experience, and failures can lead to illnesses or loss of money. If the expedition is successful, the archaeologist returns with a new exhibit for the museum. Locations for hunting artifacts are opened gradually, after fulfilling certain requirements, which makes the process of collecting thematic collections and searching for rare items especially exciting.
At the initial stages, the archaeologist brings Bigfoot prints and floppy disks with unknown technologies of ancient civilizations. Frozen remains of people can be found in the mountains. And later, fearless Indiana Jones will have to go to the Afterlife – just what won’t you do to surprise museum visitors!
If you dive deeper into the gameplay, you can find many interesting details. For example, long and non-thematic excursions can upset visitors. An employee possessed by an evil spirit is best kept away from common corridors or even cured. The remains of a frozen person should not be subjected to experiments and rather left in their original state. And ghosts left in the museum as exhibits can lose patience and escape to the afterlife forever. The game has many, many mechanics that I want to talk about, but it is better for you to see them yourself in the game. Theft protection mechanics, a combination of themes, different decor influences and much more.
In visuals, Two Point Studio does not change its style, the game’s visuals are extremely bright, pleasing to the eye and look lively and cheerful. Visitors interact with exhibits, do various humorous actions and live on the screen, just like your employees. A worker can get dirty boots on a trip as an “affliction” and leave traces when walking, lanterns above the exhibits will provide lighting, and the aquarium will pleasantly glare on the screen.
Everything in the game looks charming and does not stand out from the theme. From the movements of ticket sellers to high-tech alien exhibitions – everything in the game is thought out and beautifully executed. And as a pleasant addition, relaxed music accompanies the gameplay. I will not say that the compositions are really catchy but they are pleasant to listen to and they do not interfere with the gameplay.
