Two Point Museum Review – Carefully Curated Oddity

The ever quirky and refined Two Point series goes back to its roots a bit with some heightened urgency and a nice helping of man-eating plants. Yet, it’s the perfect jumping-on point for newcomers to the management sim genre, and it’s tough to put down considering its high skill ceiling. Two Point Museum manages to take the consequence gameplay of Two Point Hospital and pair it with Campus’s more creative toolbox to good effect.

At first I was a bit surprised with the kind of urgency required to keep your museum afloat. But in hindsight, management sims tend to get the trickiest when entertainment and finances intermingle. Museums, with their expensive world wonders housed within, can lay waste to the bank account or reward it handsomely in equal measure. So, it’s rather accurate how Two Point Museum balances challenge and creativity here. Exhibits fall apart and lose their luster over time, causing customers to leave or even potentially get injured from the toxic waste. This is where staff come in. A healthy supply of janitors and exhibit experts are crucial for a cleanly and well-maintained museum.

I like how it’s possible to still accomplish objectives and stars without going super in-depth with the various systems. Yet, the toughest objectives more or less require that kind of in-depth micromanagement, providing a high skill ceiling for veterans. For example, you can set detailed patrol areas for each employee, adjust individual salaries, name various staffers, and even change the colors of their outfits. But if you just want to get by, assigning them a ticket stand to work and occasionally training them with new skills when needed will keep you afloat.

"assigning staff to a gift shop and occasionally training them with new skills when needed will keep you afloat"

I chose not to name any staff or color anything because there was enough to keep me occupied as is. Turns out museum curators have a lot of plates to spin. Just obtaining exhibits in the first place is an adventure in itself. Instead of an exhibit menu housing an infinite stock of, say, Lone Henges (yes, the game is punny), you have to go on expeditions to procure one. This makes each exhibit feel substantive and valuable since you can’t just buy them from a menu. Each expedition requires staff members specialized in a particular field and trained in the required qualifications, or skills as I like to think of them. The way the campaign eases you through these expeditions is smooth and balanced. You never quite feel like you don’t have the staff resources to send out, yet always could train and hire more for the riskier, higher quality exhibits. The riskier the expedition, the more outlandish and popular the exhibit, requiring a large group of highly trained staff to unearth.

Part of the urgency of Two Point Museum lies in the many threats that expeditions pose for staff. Untrained and underleveled staff can go MIA or even eaten alive by wild plant life. There’s a marginal amount of randomness involved in these events, but the game always lets you know when your staff is trained enough to invalidate injuries and possible losses. Each point of interest has a set of possible exhibits to obtain, and the quality of the exhibit depends on collective staff level and amount of training, adding a nice role-playing element to the game.

"Untrained and underleveled staff can get MIA or even eaten alive by wild plant life."

Your hard-won exhibits have three core conditions which increase their value and popularity with visitors. Buzz defines an exhibit’s popularity and rate at which visitors donate money. Multi-part dinosaur exhibits require all parts for full Buzz, which if accomplished, result in a heap of cash and prospective visitors. Knowledge is the trickiest exhibit attribute to raise, and you’ll want to raise it considering the amount of special guests and fanatic visitors who thirst for high knowledge exhibits. Knowledge also opens up perks for exhibits, which range from slowing the rate of decay to some old fossils managing to energizing guests more.

I also like how there’s always a use for duplicate exhibits. Throwing these duplicate exhibits in the analysis machine generates higher knowledge for that particular exhibit while bestowing some perks. Selling is also viable, or you keep duplicates in your inventory when an old exhibit decays. But a decaying exhibit isn’t all you have to worry about. Thieves like to bag expensive exhibits to sell on the black market, and the more popular the museum, the more attracted they get. In these situations, it’s necessary to fit the museum with a security room and plenty of cameras. A wonderful little wrinkle with security is how customers feel more anxious with lots of cameras and patrols about.

"Multi-part dinosaur exhibits require all parts for full Buzz, but if accomplished, result in a heap of cash and prospective visitors."

And so it’s within this gameplay loop of managing expeditions to acquire exhibits and maintaining how the museum is run that sits at the core of Two Point Museum. You always feel pressured to take care of something if you’re not setting up an expedition team to nab your museum’s newest oddity. It’s balanced just right so that management of these systems doesn’t feel too overwhelming, which is admittedly helped by the pause and slow-down features.

So, the game has a lot of intertwined systems and it’s fun juggling them, but how is the overall progression? Like previous Two Point games, earning stars is a primary objective with the campaign mode. Earning curator stars for one of your museums involves completing dozens of objectives and requirements, giving this game a healthy amount of playtime. And there’s always a hefty batch of rewards upon gaining a star, from epic new exhibits to upgraded staff facilities. Unlike past games, museums aren’t limited to just three stars, allowing for endless advancement of a museum.

"Unlike past games, museums aren’t limited to just three stars, allowing for endless advancement of a museum"

Oh and yes, I said museums with a plural because you can put your prehistoric museum progress on hold while managing your haunted house one, and with no penalty. Each museum has its own unique theme, complete with oodles of unique exhibits and decorations all its own, and their star objectives vary as well. Of course, you can mix and match different themed exhibits together into a single museum if you wish too, but that’s best demonstrated within the vast sandbox mode.

Sandbox allows you to determine how much cash you start with, how fast exhibits decay, and so on, tailoring your difficulty and restrictions however you want. Access to different themes is pretty much unrestricted, but you still have to obtain the exhibits themselves through expeditions. A lot of the same building tools are here from Two Point Campus, allowing ample freedom regarding the placement of walls and floors and the like. If you have the guts, go and build a super museum containing every theme. I’m looking forward to what the fandom creates within Two Point Museum‘s sandbox mode.

"Sandbox allows you to determine how much cash you start with, how fast exhibits decay, and so on, tailoring your difficulty and restrictions however you want."

This brings me to the UI and menu design. As usual, Two Point Studios makes some consistently clean menus. There’s a lot of info to keep track of but it’s all generally available without congesting the screen too much. The collapsible menus  at the bottom help declutter things a bit too. However, on console, things aren’t as clean as they could be. Menu build description panels got on my nerves with how often they block other build options. And on console, it’s impossible to collapse these info panels, making me spend more time than I’d like trying to see what decoration or object is hidden behind the description panel. What makes this even more laborious is the control pad responsiveness on controllers, of which there isn’t much. The game often neglects your control pad inputs, making for a janky and inconsistent menu scrolling experience; I’m thankful for control sticks because input delay doesn’t affect them.

The general interface on consoles is acceptable and clean, sure, but it just isn’t as convenient and smooth as mouse and keyboard. Every menu action requires you to press the specific menu button to navigate between one of multiple panels. While on PC, you just slide and click exactly where you want to go effortlessly.

That said, every object, room, and NPC type is distinctly outlined and color-coordinated to give the player all the info they need right away. When placing heaters and coolers, for example, an environmental heat map overlays the screen to let you know the temperature of every area, which is useful for frozen exhibits or their hot botanic opposites. Barring the console-specific irritants, Two Point Museum controls wonderfully well, sporting efficiently clean UI.

"I spend more time than I’d like trying to see what decoration or object is hidden behind the menu’s description panel."

Of course, what really separates Two Point games from the other management titles is its quirky tone, something which Museum proudly puts on display. Tourists get eaten by man-eating plant exhibits, kids climb and fall off stuff constantly, and there’s no shortage of ridiculous yeti guests and the occasional ghost hovering in the ticket queue.

The radio station banter is particularly brilliant, referencing past Two Point games and making fun of itself regularly. Best of all, the Two Point Radio doesn’t outstay its welcome or feel repetitive even after dozens of hours of play. I find Two Point Hospital a bit more clever with its gameplay puns though. Who can forget the lightheaded patients with actual light bulbs for heads?

All and all, Two Point Museum offers a familiar gameplay loop and general fun factor to previous games in the series. It blends the urgency of Hospital with the creative tools of Campus to create an addicting and satisfying management sim experience. There’s a lot of replayability here and its tone and content manage to stay fresh, just like any well maintained museum. While it’s true that this title doesn’t really do much new or invigorating for the series besides the museum structure, it manages to balance the best aspects of past games together into a satisfying experience. Two Point Museum is a must-play for fans of the series and a solid game to dig into for management sim players in general.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.