Two Point Museum Preview: A familiar but fresh simulation

When it comes to simulation games, there is an established framework that many titles tend to follow. Whether it's Two Point (as is the case today), the Planet series, the recent Galacticare, the list goes on, the structure is often very similar to the point where if you've become familiar with one, the rest tend to be easy to pick up too. To me, this is very apparent after a 2024 spent reviewing Galacticare and previewing Planet Coaster 2 several times, which is likely why I felt comfortable but also a little surprised by Two Point Studios' Two Point Museum.

I'm a bit of a Two Point veteran, someone who has in the past frequented Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus, so going into Museum I was expecting something almost exactly the same. I was expecting a blank canvas in which I filled with rooms that serve a purpose for bettering the building and facility I operate. I was expecting a supporting decorations suite that enabled me to customise and enhance the plot, and on top of this a whole list of simulation statistics and information that explain how well or poorly I'm completing the task at hand. Essentially, I was expecting the Hospital or Campus formula but shifted onto a museum template, and while that's clearly present underneath the surface, this is also a game that fundamentally works a little differently.

When you think of a museum you picture a huge open and glossy building packed with relics from throughout history. You don't think of the tight corridors and crammed urban planning that coins university campuses and hospitals, and that plays directly into how Two Point Museum works. This isn't a game about figuring out how to get a bunch of rooms into a concise and limited area to fulfil the needs of your employees/students. No, this is a game about decoration and artistic flair. It's less rigid and formulaic and more open-ended and freeing, as it's all about how you manage to incorporate countless different historical items and prizes into an open space and then proceed to enhance them with helpful information boards, places for visitors to donate cash, additional flair to better the experience, and overall create a fantastical and amazing museum that you wish you could visit yourself.

The point is, Two Point Museum fundamentally plays like Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus and it uses all the same mechanics and tools that were found in those games, except the core principle has now shifted and changed, meaning it's less about urban planning and more about letting creativity flourish. That may sound like a positive change or a negative development depending on how you enjoy these types of games, but the main thing to take away is that you still have two core goals to achieve: make as much money as possible and create an experience of such a high quality that you earn stars and acclaim along the way.

I actually really enjoy this change in direction because it provides a unique take on a formula that could feel a bit repetitive after a third instalment. The freedom to focus more on decorations and flair over walls and room sizes allows you to play the game with a newfound perspective. You may spend an hour constructing an elaborate section of your museum around prehistoric discoveries, with dinosaur bones and fossils being your centrepieces with shrubbery and rock formations adding flair, while precisely placed benches and seating are nestled in corners near to donation collectors policed by security guards. You may decide to customise the floor tiles of this section, adjust the wallpaper, and then set tour stations where guides lead visitors through defined and compelling interactive presentations, all while children play on sets themed around the area. You might have a gift shop selling prehistoric goodies and behind-closed-doors an analysis room where relics are studied and used to produce perks that improve your displays even further. And since it's a business first-and-foremost, you may even have rich collectors dropping by attempting to purchase your relics for their own collections for massively marked up prices, all while health inspectors judge how cleanly and safely your museum is maintained. Or you may instead trend to an aquarium or botanical theme instead. Again, this is all very much a Two Point experience, but it's a unique Two Point experience all the same, something that's bolstered by a few fresh mechanics too.

The biggest change in Two Point Museum is a world map-like activity where you send employees on grand adventures to discover and bring back amazing items and historical finds. You can head to dusty deserts to find dinosaur bones, lush jungles to acquire freaky flora, vast oceans to catch fantastical fish and more. This mechanic is a bit Evil Genius 2 in design, where you mainly plot out the task at hand and then send your team off in a helicopter and await their return while you push on with the more intricate and important museum-managing business in Two Point County. There's no limit to how many expeditions you head out on, except the fact that they cost money to fund, and money in a museum isn't always easy to come by, hence the challenges of continuing to display or research great parts of history and profiting off them instead to provide the revenue to continue doing so in the future.

In a typical Two Point fashion, Two Point Museum also provides a campaign mode that tasks you with building up and turning unique but barren museums into flourishing facilities. You'll start at a more neutral area designed to teach you the basics before heading to Passwater Cove to create an aquarium-themed museum or instead Wailon Lodge to embrace the supernatural. The idea here is that every star you earn in each of the various museum locations will be counted toward your Curator Class, a rating that will increase as you build more impressive museums throughout your career, and that will see more rewards and options made available to you regardless of the museum location you're currently attached to. It's all very authentic Two Point again in this manner, but as they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Considering there is still months to go before Two Point Museum makes its arrival, I would like to see Two Point Studios target a few areas that impacted my experience during this preview session. Some placing systems and mechanics felt a bit rough and unwieldy even with a mouse, and staff tend to be a bit unreliable when it comes to doing their jobs. There were frequent occasions where my botanical treasures would die because the botany experts would lose track of watering and maintaining them to keep them alive, unless I manually told them to attend a plant. When you're managing a bunch of different tasks and ticking off countless pop-ups, the last thing you want is to also have to micromanage a useless employee...

But beyond this, there wasn't really any part of Two Point Museum that left me disappointed or wanting more. The Two Point formula has been effortless and easy entertainment since it was created and in Museum we're just seeing that carried forward once again. This is shaping up to be a delightful and simple simulator that retains the signature Two Point humour and charm, and all at a price point that seems very affordable (currently £24.99 on Steam). I don't tend to reference price tags in previews, but from what I've seen you're going to get a good amount of game here for what is often less than half the cost of many AAA projects. March 2025 can't come any sooner.