Two Point Hospital is one of the most unique and enjoyable business sims on the market right now. Its a concoction with just the right doses of complexity, creativity, freedom, whimsy, and humour, and what it delivers is so engrossing, players can easily sink dozens of hours into it. It’s exciting, then, that developer Two Point Studios is taking everything it learned from Two Point Hospital, improving upon it, and then applying it to a school setting. Ahead of the imminent launch of Two Point Campus, here, we’re going to talk about a few key details that you should know about the game.
PREMISE
Just as Two Point Hospital tasked players with constructing, managing, and expanding a hospital, Two Point Campus will put you in charge of a budding academy, all while managing your finances and ensuring that you keep raking in the profits. As the game kicks off, you’re given a piece of land, and with the year beginning during summer break, you have plenty of time to construct your university campus to welcome students. Two Point Campus will, of course, also involve plenty of outdoor building and construction, and even allow you to place trees and decorations and what have you.
BUILDING AND IMPROVING YOUR ACADEMY
Building and improving your academy is, of course, your ultimate goal in Two Point Campus, and there will be a number of ways to do that. Ensuring that your students are performing well will be the key to everything, and to facilitate that, you’ll have to expand your academy in a number of ways, by adding new buildings, libraries, teaching facilities, classroom, dormitories, organizing extra-curricular activities, and more. As mentioned earlier, you’ll have to keep a keen eye on your finances as well, because everything from construction to keeping students happy to recruiting and maintaining staff will chip away at your pool of money. Oh, and speaking of staff…
STAFF
Simply expanding your academy with new facilities and buildings won’t be enough, of course. You’ll also have to recruit staff to make sure that it functions smoothly. Staff will include professors, researchers, lecturers, teaching assistants, janitors, and more. Again, the purpose of the staff is to ensure that your students can excel, so players will also have to keep an eye on exactly who they’re hiring, and whether they’ll be a right fit for your institution.
STUDENTS
Appropriately enough, the students themselves are also incredibly important in Two Point Campus. All students are procedurally generated and have different personalities and behaviours, which, in turn, mans they’ll have different needs. Keeping them happy and ensuring that they do well in whatever classes they take up is crucial, which means you’ll have to focus on plenty of extra-curricular and non-academic stuff as well, including societies, clubs, gigs, or just letting them enjoy the nightlife. At the same time, if a student is having too much fun, their academic performance might suffer, which is something else that you have to keep an eye on. Other factors will also have an affect on student morale and, as such, how they’re performing, from how clean and attractive your campus is to what sort of facilities are available to students.
STUDENT RELATIONSHIPS
Two Point Campus is clearly going for plenty of systemic depth where the students aspect of its gameplay loop is concerned. Interestingly, in fact, students will also form relationships and bonds with one another and the characters around them. From enrollment until graduation, every student will stick around in your campus for quite a while, with each academic year lasting roughly about 20 minutes. That means each student will go through their campus life differently, succeed or fail in different ways, for different bonds, and more. That’s a level of variation that sounds incredibly exciting on paper, so let’s hope it’s as good as it sounds.
COURSES
Goofiness was the name of the game in Two Point Hospital, and so, too, will be the case in its successor. In fact, it looks like Two Point Campus is actually kicking things up a notch on that front. Sure, you’re in charge of a college campus, but it’s not an ordinary educational institute. It’ll involve all manners of schools and classes, including clown college, chef school, and more. A couple of the more unusual courses that have been confirmed so far are Knight School, Spy School, and Wizardry School. Each school, as you might imagine, will also have unique courses, activities, and mechanics.
GREATER EMPHASIS ON CREATIVITY
One area where Two Point Campus seems to be making some significant improvements over Two Point Hospital is the level of flexibility and freedom it’ll afford players with its building and construction mechanics. Rather than putting the bulk of its focus on the management side of things, Two Point Campus will also allow players to get much more creative in what they want to build and how they want to build it. Even though players will have the option to instantly use templates if they wish to, in general, the game will offer far more freedom with its building mechanics, as well as a greater range of options and more creative tools to use.
SANDBOX MODE
As you’d expect, Two Point Campus will also have a sandbox mode. For those unfamiliar, its campaign will be a more structured and guided experience that’ll present players with overarching goals to work towards and make consistent progress through them, but for those who’re looking for something less regimented, sandbox mode will let you build and grow your campus however you want.
PRE-ORDER BONUSES
Two Point Campus is launching for PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC on August 9, but if you decide to pre-order the game (or have already pre-ordered it), you will, of course, get some in-game bonuses. That’ll include decorations to place in your campus, like a U-shaped topiary, or the fountain of knowledge, or the giant pearl of wisdom. Meanwhile, those who own Two Point Hospital will also get Campus-themed items in the former, including a Campus jacket and various items themed after different schools in Two Point Campus.
PC REQUIREMENTS
Unsurprisingly, Two Point Campus’ system requirements on PC aren’t very demanding, even on recommended settings. On minimum settings, the game will require 4 GB of RAM, either an Intel Core i3 6100 or an AMD FX-4350, along with either a GeForce GT 1030 with 2 GB VRAM or an AMD RX550 with 2 GB VRAM. Meanwhile, on recommended settings, you’ll require 8 GB of RAM, either an Intel Core i5 6600 or an AMD Ryzen 1600x, and either a GeForce GTX 1060 with 3 GB VRAM or an AMD RX 580 with 4 GB VRAM. On either setting, you’ll only need about 4 GB of storage space.