It’s pretty universal that everyone loves museums, maybe not all of them, but there’s at least one you have as a favorite. Chicago’s Field Museum and Griffin Museum of Science and Industry are my favorites.Two Point Museum is a first of its kind museum management game, and Two Points Studios absolutely nails it. Fun and silliness is still front and center, retaining its British sensibilities and humor that’s not quite “Night at the Museum”, but there’s so much character here. Two Point Museum is a masterclass in the tycoon genre and Two Point Studio’s best game in the series to-date.
Two Point Hospital was a hilarious throwback and modernization of the classic hospital management game. Then Two Point Campus followed and was a bit academic, yet it gave us something never seen before. Now we have Two Point Museum, where being a curator of a museum is more appealing than a hospital director or school administrator, and this hits hard with a feeling of wonderment and childlike curiosity. The game is a bit restrained compared to its predecessors, with only five themed museum levels to explore, but you’ll spend many hours here. Whereas Two Point Campus had twelve levels and Two Point Hospital had fifteen. You’ll start your first museum in Pre-Historic with Memento Mile, then move to Marine Life with Passwater Cove, onto Supernatural with Wailon Lodge, then to Science with Bungle Wasteland, and lastly Space in Pebberly Heights. Each museum provides its own theme from its exhibits to decorations and guest attractions. It’s a matter of quality over quantity. There is a sandbox mode where you can go bigger and better, with the freedom of mixing and matching the themes at-will.
This time it’s more about the money, I feel. Now it plays its part in the prior two games, but here there’s more of a driver for having it. When starting a level with a new museum, you’ll first need to place ticket booths, create staff rooms & bathrooms, hire janitors & security, place donation boxes, hire experts, and find where you’ll be placing your exhibits to attract visitors. Staff is important but not as much as generating buzz and income and overall guest happiness not unlike a theme park. I always equate these games like to spinning plates, and it’s no different here. There’s a lot you’re in charge of, but monthly reports of funds, heat maps to determine unhappiness or unsuccessful areas, and notifications with important feedback are the things they give you to avoid dropping said plates.
Two Point Museum offers good guidance in its tutorials to make sure you understand everything. The game’s challenge system is also a great way to keep you on-track. In fact, it gives you a lot of incentive, perhaps to your detriment as the late night hours approach, but you’re so close from achieving that next goal. The game saves periodically, but you can also quick save at your leisure if you get overly paranoid about progress. The game lets you pin certain objectives to the main screen so you can keep your eye on that next unlock.
When running a museum, it will have its own star rating based on monthly guests, revenue, and overall attractiveness that only grows over time. This is not to be confused with your curator level, which is an accumulation of all your efforts and accolades across all sites. As you progress through the game, you can move on to new areas and not look back, but you are meant to bounce between them and the game is more interconnected than before.
Expeditions are new to this series, and they’re easily the biggest and most engaging addition the series has ever seen. To head off on them, you round up your experts, and send them to various parts of the world to find artifacts that can be brought back to your museums and put on display to garner new and returning visitors. Along the way there will be dilemmas for you to solve like injuries, snake bites, and tough terrain to choose what to do next. These decisions will have ramifications, like putting your experts or prospective exhibits in danger, that’s all a roll of the dice. It’s not dire circumstances, but it is harrowing for a game of this nature to have stakes a little high. There’s a bit of a meta game here, where you can unlock new locations by meeting certain criteria. In doing so you’ll find more rare artifacts to bring back for all to see for themselves. In some cases, artifacts are in many pieces, requiring multiple visits in order to get them all on display. Completed fossils attract the most people, and even doing it piecemeal is something that generates further buzz.
I mentioned earlier that staff happiness is not as important, and that’s because the staff load is minimal and hiring is simplified. You’ll only ever hire experts (for exhibits), assistants (for sales), janitors (for cleaning up and building), and security (for keeping kids off items and later game efforts). You can build a training room to get each type of staff specialized for specific things you need them to do. You may need to buy certain equipment to keep tenured staff happy, or simply raise their salary in order to keep them. It’s nothing very time consuming, but it’s there enough to remind you that your people are just as important, too.
Two Point Museum is big on decorations and customization. With over 200 exhibits across all museums, you’ll have many ways to design to your hearts content. Thankfully all of the staples of these games are still present like saving room templates of optimal design so you aren’t wasting time on remaking the best layouts. Additionally, rooms that are just the way you like can be picked up in whole to a better location. The game operates on two currencies, cash and kudosh. Cash is used from income to hire staff, embark on expeditions, and outfitting your museum with its design. Kudosh is earned from completing objectives and extra goals to purchase incremental improvements to outfit your museums. You’ll be able to customize everything from the archways, one-way doors, staff doors, flooring, wallpaper, and everything in-between. This is all to create a flow that keeps visitors engaged and moving throughout your museums in a specific way.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the silly that permeates this game. For instance, placing your first clown fish introduces you to their appearance with a bright red clown nose and face paint. Prehistoric digs unveil a diskette fossil that can be displayed. There’s no shortage of jokes, which is evident through Two Point Radio, mixing elevator type music with satire commercials interlaced with a DJ talking about events. There’s always something that keeps a grin on your face.
Growth means attention, and sometimes you attract the wrong kind. Thieves and heists will be planned against your most precious finds. So you’ll need to bolster security with cameras and extra patrols in order to keep them safe, or lose them forever. There’s an idea of loss, as some of your artifacts found in ice require constant cold provided by freezers, else they melt and are gone for good. It’s very easy to keep these items protected and safe, but it’s another layer of protection you’ve never really had to concern yourself with before.
As you museums gain prominence in the county, you’ll conduct tours. This is where you can create guided pathing to ensure the best experience for those patrons. It’s an interesting mechanic, but you want to ensure the VIPs have a great time, and donate generously.
Two Point Museum doesn’t boast many graphical features, and its requirements aren’t very high. But it’s a very pretty game, and I was able to achieve on average around 130fps, even with busy and complex museum designs.
My PC Specs:
– Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
– Intel Core i9 13900K @ 5.8GHz
– ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360 ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
– G.SKILL TRIDENT Z5 6000MHZ 64GB (32×2) DDR5 RAM
– ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
– WD_BLACK SN850X M.2 (4 TB)
– LG UltraGear 34GP950B-G (21:9 Ultrawide @ 3440×1440)
Two Point Museum is the best the series has to offer. Playing this gives you an appreciation for what goes into making museums viable and sustainable. It might even encourage you to visit a local one you haven’t been to lately, or have never visited before. There’s plenty of laugh out loud moments, and things that will keep you smiling as you play, it’s simply a joy. Two Point Museum is a much more focused game, but one that’s near perfection in its execution of first-class management tools.
A Steam code was provided in advance by the publisher for review purposes
