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Let’s start this review off with one undeniable truth: I have a soft spot for Two Point Studios games. I’ve previously played Two Point Hospital and even wrote a review for Two Point Campus, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time in this quirky little county that Two Point Studios has built.
There’s a charm and goofiness to these games that would feel out of place in other management simulators. But it just feels right fixing a clown’s broken funny bone or seeing a scientist trudge around “tarred and weathered” because of a rough expedition to uncover dinosaur bones.
When Two Point Campus was on the cusp of release, the development team put a lot of effort into highlighting how feedback from Two Point Hospital was vital to the development process.
In many ways, there are still traces of that feedback lingering in the UI and design for Two Point Museum. At some points, however, it feels like Two Point Studios failed to learn from the past and is repeating some of its original mistakes.
Two Point Museum — What I like
Set in the delightful world of Two Point County, Two Point Museum is a management simulator that wears its heart on its sleeve. It is the third entry in the Two Point franchise, following on the heels of Two Point Hospital and its sequel, Two Point Campus.
This time, players are put in the role of a museum curator, tasked with uncovering unique and exciting exhibits while managing the daily challenges of running a business that operates on little more than spit and wishes.
In the campaign, players start their first museum with a couple of lackluster exhibits and then fumble their way through sending out an expedition team (consisting of scientists, janitors, assistants, and security guards employed at the museum) to recover new artifacts for display.
Of course, if there is an opportunity for a cheesy joke or a goofy play on words, Two Point Museum is going to take it. So these expeditions can cause your employees to return to the museum with a plethora of quirky ailments.
You’ll need to have made the accommodations to your staff room necessary to treat your team and keep them ready to restore exhibits or discover new ones.
Two Point Museum’s guided campaign sees players flitting between a variety of unique themed museums. Things kick off with the prehistoric museum, and your teams are going out to dig up dinosaur bones.
You’ll need to repeat some excavations for better quality exhibits or to uncover the parts to complete a bone set.
Once you complete the requirements to earn a star at the first museum, then you can move on to one of the two other museums that are unlocked. From this point, you’ll find yourself either searching for spirits to create a paranormal museum with unruly ghosts or collecting aquatic creatures and managing aquariums.
There’s a lot to take in as your museums expand, as some ghosts don’t like to share their environment with certain other ghost types, and some fish have more demanding needs than their counterparts.
It’s the variety of exhibit types and museum curation opportunities that really make Two Point Museum shine.
It would be easy enough for Two Point Studios to fall back on some goofy tropes from the previous two games. Instead, it truly feels like Two Point Museum stands on its own two feet when it comes to humor and creativity.
Of course, if the pressing weight of gameplay objectives is too much for you and you just want the freedom of creating your own museum with wild abandon, the Sandbox mode returns with Two Point Museum.
You can really let your creative freedom take hold. It’s great to see this feature return for players who just want to experience Two Point Museum without any guardrails.
Two Point Museum — What I don’t like
Two Point Museum is the third entry from Two Point Studios in this franchise, and it’s hard to find fault when a team this talented so carefully crafts an experience. That’s not to say that it’s a perfect experience, but I do admit that it can be a little easy for me to gloss over issues because I’m so busy just having fun.
That doesn’t mean that Two Point Museum is without faults, though. I still remember what a struggle using a controller for Two Point Hospital was, and then Two Point Campus made a significant leap in improvements for controller support thanks to Two Point Studios giving weight to player feedback. However, Two Point Museum does feel like it’s a step backward when it comes to UI and controller inputs.
I played the game both on PC via Steam with mouse and keyboard inputs and on Xbox with a controller. In the past, I’ve preferred to play Two Point games on Windows via the Microsoft Store thanks to support for Play Anywhere, using a controller’s analog sticks for camera controls and a mouse for simultaneously navigating UI.
My preferred setup is one that is a bit of an anomaly, due in part to my physical limitations from my disability. At the time of writing this review, I was unable to use controller inputs on Steam, and the Xbox version of the game did not support Play Anywhere entitlements, which created some barriers.
The limitations of Two Point Museum’s accessibility didn’t stop with input options, either. This is the third game in this franchise, all of which have NPCs providing dialogue via text captions and a radio that provides insight into what’s happening in your buildings along with witty jokes and references. Unfortunately, the radio station still has no subtitles.
The lack of subtitles proves particularly frustrating when you’re doing Curator Class missions, which serve as campaign skill checkpoints. In some instances, you’ll have the radio mentioning that burglars are invading your museum, with the challenge being to stop them before they leave with your exhibits or other valuables. If you can’t hear that they’re incoming, however, it can be difficult to actually stop them.
Two Point Museum — Should you buy it?
I have my gripes about Two Point Museum, and it is a little disheartening that it feels like most of them are gripes I also had with Two Point Campus—especially when it comes to accessibility. However frustrating to navigate the UI with a controller feels, though, it’s hard to deny that Two Point Museum is just fun to play.
It’s the kind of game that you sit down and launch after dinner, thinking you’ll play for a half hour to an hour while you have a little spare time. Then you look at the clock, it’s 6 AM and the sun is coming up.
In an era when everybody is hyper-fixated on realism and frame rates and faux outrage at the next big AAA, it’s nice to be able to sit down with a game that’s just focused on being a good time. Two Point Studios embraces the wacky, the weird, and the absurd and makes it an enjoyable experience — minus a few quirks.
Could the controller mapping be better? Sure, but that could be said of a lot of games. Once you adjust to it, you’re still going to lose 40+ hours in a week to Two Point Museum and be grateful for it. I, for one, can’t wait to see where we get to go in Two Point County next.
