Two Point Museum review

A museum feels like a natural evolution of Two Point’s game series so far. We’ve had Two Point Hospital, the spiritual successor of Theme Hospital, followed by university-building Two Point Campus. Two Point Museum, then, builds on an already-solid system, but this time putting us in a museum setting. With a bunch of new mechanics, some seriously cool artefacts to add to your museums and some excellent museum types to play around with, I think this might be my favourite of the series yet.

As you’d expect, building and designing a good museum is very important. You’ll need exhibits, refreshments for your visitors, a ticket booth, donation pots, and plenty of decorations to make for a pleasant day out. You’ll also need bathrooms, staff rooms, training rooms and research labs — much of which you’ll already be familiar with. If you’ve played Two Point Hospital or Campus before, you’ll be able to hit the ground running here straight away: in some ways, it’s like stepping back into your favourite pair of slippers.

It’s not just in the actions you perform, either. Familiar items and brands will make you grin, like Cheesy Gubbins and Burp! vending machines, and you’ll certainly recognise the voice coming over the tannoy.

As lovely as that cosy familiarity is, though, it’s the new mechanics of Two Point Museum that have really hooked me in. Having new treatment rooms in your hospital simply meant completing some research, but in Two Point Museum, new artefacts need to be found by sending out your experts on an expedition. You don’t actually get to go on the expedition, which is a shame, but you’ll need to select a team and await their return.

There’s the occasional hiccup along the way that might require your assistance — a multiple choice input — but that’s as involved as you’ll get. The museum won’t run itself while an expedition is happening, after all.

There’s no guarantee as to what your team will find on an expedition, so you might end up with multiples of the same artefact, or you might get something so rare that visitors will be flooding in. Sometimes, you’ll only find part of an exhibit — like a partial dinosaur skeleton — so you’ll need to send out more teams in the hopes they’ll find the rest. You can display partial exhibits, but they’re not as impressive as completed ones.

There are dozens of areas to explore on the map, and each potential expedition spot holds new artefacts for your team to find. Not all locations are available right away, though: some will require particular tools or experts with specific areas of expertise. Others will have specific unlock requirements, like having a certain number of exhibits on show in your museum, or reaching a particular prestige level.

It can be a little slow to get new exhibits, considering you need to wait for your expedition team to come back — and there’s no guarantee they’ll find anything new. But there are plenty of other ways you can keep improving your museum even if you don’t have anything new to show off. You can decorate the entire space by changing floors and ceilings, and you can add neat touches like one-way doors, barriers and staff-only areas to improve the flow of your museum’s footfall. You could have specially-curated areas of your museum, providing themed spaces for your guests to enjoy. Or you can simply have a free-for-all, with exhibits dotted here, there and everywhere.

Thinking about placement of your exhibits is important, though, as you’ll earn extra ‘buzz’ score if an exhibit is near a related artefact or a particular decoration. You’ll want to add various decorations near each exhibit to maximise its buzz score: if you’re working in a prehistoric museum, things like plants, rocks and fossil decals will keep that buzz score high. The higher the buzz score, the more impressed visitors will be with your exhibit, so it’s important to keep on top of it.

There are other things to consider, too, like donation bins and information stands. Your guests want to learn about the exhibits they’re looking at, so placing information boards for them to study is important. And, ultimately, your goal is always to make as much cold, hard cash as possible — and that means having donation bins spread liberally throughout your museum. If your guests like what they’re looking at, they’re more likely to leave a donation.

While I got a huge kick out of placing fossils and huge dinosaur skeletons in my museum, it’s not the only type of museum that Two Point Museum offers. There’s a marine museum, a supernatural museum, a science museum and a space museum, all of them with their own wonderful quirks and fantastic exhibits to uncover. The marine museum allows you to build giant fish tanks, so it’s more of an aquarium than a museum. The supernatural museum might be my favourite of them all, allowing you to capture actual ghosts and keep them on display. I’m not sure about the ethics involved there, but that’s not for you to worry about.

Every museum type has something new for you to concern yourself with. In a supernatural museum, for example, each ghost you capture comes from a different era, so you’ll need to ensure their room is furnished appropriately to make them feel comfortable (see, they’re well looked-after at least!). In a marine museum, you’ll need to consider whether your fish are coldwater or tropical fish and treat their tank appropriately. Different fish also eat different types of food, so you’ll need to ensure every need is met.

The same is true for certain exhibit types. Even in your prehistoric museum, you’ll have some artefacts on ice that need to be kept cool. You’ll also have some botanical exhibits that require certain conditions, like humidity and temperature. It sounds a lot, but since each exhibit will tell you exactly what it needs by clicking on it, there’s no guesswork involved.

As you progress through Two Point Museum, you’ll unlock new features such as interactive exhibits, new types of rooms and guided tours. The interactive exhibits are great fun, and come in all shapes and sizes — your supernatural museum can have a seance simulator, for example, while your prehistoric museum might have a big plastic dinosaur for kids to climb all over.

While most of your museum won’t be separated into rooms, there are certain areas that still need to be built in the traditional Two Point way. Staff rooms and toilets, for example, need to be built, and you’ll need rooms for things like the gift shop, research, training and security.

Like previous Two Point games, there’s an awful lot of content in Two Point Museum, and simply playing through the campaign is going to take you upwards of 30 hours, depending how good you are at completing all of the goals. It’s my favourite way to play, though, as it introduces you to everything you need to know in a steady manner without ever overwhelming you. When you do have a grasp on everything, however, you can head into sandbox mode and play without restrictions to build the museum of your dreams.

I’m not sure what we’ll get next, but the team at Two Point Studios has once again delivered a fantastic sim filled with life, character and entertainment. Colourful and accessible, these are sim games that absolutely anyone can (and should!) jump into, and Two Point Museum might just be the best yet. The range of museums and exhibits to work with is second to none, and the amount of personality in every corner of the game simply shines. It’s a huge timesink, but if you’re ready to spend hours building the best ghost museum you’ve ever seen (maybe the only ghost museum you’ve ever seen?) this is the place to do it.