Two Point Museum is the newest title in the Two Point series from the developers over at Two Point Studios and publisher Sega. Following on from the success of Two Point Hospital in 2018 and more recently Two Point Campus in 2022, Two Point Museum puts you in charge of a selection of Museums (shocker) as you try and become the best curator you can be.
If you’re not familiar with the franchise – it acts as a spiritual successor to Bullfrog Studios Theme Hosipital – and with that comes a whole lot of charm and humour and creative mechanics. Two Point Museum isn’t about being as realistic a museum running simulator as possible, it’s about being the most fun. And it certainly is a lot of fun.
Calling Doctor Jones
Two Point Museum starts with you being installed as the new curator of museums Two Point County after the last curator left things in a bit of a shambles. Your starting point – Memento Mile – acts like a tutorial for the game introducing all of the new concepts specific to running a museum. If you’re a veteran of the Two Point games you may just want to jump into Sandbox mode and play around however, things are a lot different in this entry so I’d really recommend starting with the Story Mode and working through the missions to become a top ranked curator.
One of the new features is how you populate your museum with exhibits. Instead of researching new machines or buying things straight from the build menu, you’ll need to hire a team of experts (including janitors and security guards) to go out on expeditions to find things to show off to your guests.
Expeditions are dispatched from the museum’s helipad, with each helipad supporting one expedition at a time. You start of with one helipad at most of the story museums, but even in sandbox mode the first helipad can be built for free, while additional ones come at increasing cost. Bundle your museum expert into the helicopter, set them off to a Point of Interest and hope they don’t injure themselves lugging back a fossil (or ghost) to show off in your shiny new museum.
This new way of filling your buildings is a lot of fun to manage. In order to unlock new POIs you’ll need to train your staff in different skills, or research old exhibits to unlock enlightenment levels in the various echibit themes. You can also craft tools to take with you on trips that increase you chance of finding a pristine exhibit, or more importantly, stop one of your crew from being eaten by a giant fish. The whole system makes it a lot more difficult to just set up your museum and let it generate money until you hit the top star level. If you want your guests to get the most of of their visit you need to keep exploring.
Theme Museum
There are 5 different museums to choose from in Two Point Museum. You visit each of them as you progress the story and they all come with their own unique challenges. Each one has a theme, but as you explore you can start filling them with exhibits from different areas. They are as follows: Prehistory – Memento Mile, Aquarium – Passwater Cove, Supernatural – Wailon Lodge, Science – Bungle Wasteland, Space – Pebberley Heights.
I particularly enjoyed Memento Mile and Pebberley Heights, as I found the challenges and exhibit variety the most interesting. Memento Mile is the most basic (unless you unlock all the plots and turn it intoa mega museum), with the expeditions being pretty standard and the unlocks easy to manage. You’ll need coolers if you want to show frozen exhibits, heaters and humidifiers for Botany based exhibits and plenty of interactive displays for the kids to play on. Yes, there is a big dinosaur slide, and yes I’m sad it isn’t real for me to play on.
Pebberley Heights has the challenge of you not having any clue what you’re actually exhibiting, so you need to break down a lot of finds to increase your enlightenment to satisfy all the professors coming to see your amazing… Space… Table..? Prior to staring this map, I hadn’t really been analysing exhibits unless directed to (as they are then removed) but having a full area focused on the mechanic made me realise how valuable it was for creating the best museum possible.
The other 3 have their own gimmicks too: aquariums and trying to not let your fish eat each other for Passwater Cove; exploring abandoned science labs nest to a toxic swamp (pro tip – lots of janitors will help with the vomiting) in Bungle Wasteland; and actual ghosts in Wailon Lodge.
Out of all of them, Wailon Lodge was the only one I didn’t have too much fun in. Having to manage your guests and also keep the ghosts happy so they didn’t escape and terrorise people was a bit of a chore, and the set up of building and furnising rooms instead of a fun layout of cool exhibits was a bit tedious. I also managed to fall into a bit of a loop where I couldn’t get my approval over 75% to progress because one of my janitors was possesed and kept vandalising the building. The only way to cure him was to get past 75%, so I ended up having to fire him just to keep the place clean.
Keep the Buzz Going
You improve the over all success of your museum by increasing the Buzz of your exhibits. This is managed by strategic decorating (some things get a Buzz bonus when placed next to certain other exhibits and decorations) and finding better exhibits on your travels. I particularly enjoyedorganising all the layouts. Previous entries in the series have you constructing a load of rooms for each functions, but given the museum theme you can now put in little partitions and one way doors to funnel your guests through your highly curated experience.
Catering to different types of guests was also fun, and made setting up the optimal museum more of a puzzle than previous titles. Kids don’t care about knowledge, so they need interactive displays to have fun (adults will happily hog these though). Professors are more likely to buy books from the gift shop, so better not stock it with toys and onesies. It’s a mostly stress free experience (apart from when my security guard got eaten by a fish), but tweaking everything to maximise each guests visit really scratched my brain itch for micro-management.
A lot of the old staples return, like making sure you’re staff are happy with their pay, but some things have been scaled back. You can’t reduce break times anymore, so you may need to be a nicer boss and actually hire enough staff in order to run a successful business. You can still set them to only do certain jobs which is helpful, and generally speaking a lot less things catch fire than what I remember from Two Point Hosptial.
Crime Does Pay
There are also pop up museums with timed challenges to contend with. The first one involves trying to stop lots of weird and wacky criminal guys from stealing your exhibits. Alongside the ghost rooms in Wailon Lodge, the crime mechanic was something I also didn’t really enjoy in Two Point Museum . You can build a camera room and hire security guards to man it, or security chairs for your guards to watch over your exhibits. Both seemed very hit of miss to me.
The way the camera system is set up means you have to make sure all cameras are in range of the room, and you also need to make sure your guards are fast enough to catch thieves if they find them. On more than one occassion I watched a criminal run off with a exhibit because my guard got stuck on another guest, and even though the game is very goofy having thieves and vandals appear as often as they do just felt kinda bad if I didn’t manage to catch them. It’s a small gripe, but it is a gripe nonetheless.
Final Thoughts
Two Point Museum offers a refreshing take on management simulation with its innovative expedition mechanic and diverse museum themes, injecting both challenge and charm into the gameplay. The journey from being a novice curator to mastering the art of exhibit curation is thoughtfully structured through its tutorial-like start at Memento Mile and the subsequent themed museums, each with unique challenges and engaging mechanics.
As with all the Two Point games it pays to pay attention to pick up all the jokes and references as you play through. It marries all the humour and creativity with management savvy, offering a nuanced and exciting excursion through a vibrant world of exhibits. And while there are some nostalgic nods to Two Point Hospital’s style, it carves out its own unique space in the genre.
Two Point Museum was reviewed on Steam. Gamer Social Club would like to thank the publisher for providing a code. It is avaiable on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S from the 4th of March 2025.
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