Two Point Museum Review – Fun Curation Simulation

Two Point Studios has developed a successful recipe with their self-titled line of Two Point simulation games, dating back to 2018. The latest entry, Two Point Museum, recently launched, and our review will help you decide if this is a simulation game for you.

Funny Story…

There’s actually a story to Two Point Museum, but it’s simply an excuse for why you’re put in charge of managing a museum – the previous curator abruptly packed things up and left, so the museum is desperate to have anyone jump in and take on the task of building a new one, nearly from the ground up. Playing any sort of location/city building simulation game for the story kind of defeats the purpose, because you’re trying to write your own story as you bring the location back from the brink of ruin, but it does provide for some entertainment at the start.

Humor is woven into almost every aspect of Two Point Museum. There is an in-game radio station which by default plays all the time. It provides the game’s soundtrack, sure, but occasionally some DJs will latch onto the airwaves, and tell an anecdote, or ask the listener an absurd question, or simply air out some mild-mannered grievances. This isn’t some GTA level of radio, just some silly fun. Which really describes all of these Two Point games: silly fun.

Much like Two Point Studios’ earlier games, Two Point Museum features locations grounded in reality, while leaving plenty of room for fantasy. For example, once you finish the game’s tutorial, you unlock two new museums to manage, one of which used to be a haunted hotel, with spirits wandering the grounds and everything. You can use a paranormal expert to calm and contain this spirit, who can now be put into special spectral rooms, and have their own needs which must be met. Failure to do so means the spirit can get angry, and will scare your museum guests away.

Picky Guests

These guests determine a museum’s success or failure. As they soak in your museum, they generate Buzz, and Knowledge, and when those score are higher, the guests leave an online review about your museum, which can drive more traffic, thus increasing your revenue. Guests come in all shapes, sizes, and in some cases like the Yeti, species. Some arrive alone, others bring their whole family. There’s tourists, academics, and other guest types, each with various things they like and react to in unique ways, which affect how much Buzz and Knowledge they’ll earn during their visit. For instance, college professors care about how much information is around the exhibit, as they enthusiastically generate Knowledge. At the same time, an average tourist guest will want to have higher Buzz levels from the exhibits they visit. Certain decorations placed in close enough proximity to a given exhibit directly affect how much Buzz and Knowledge they generate, naturally with an upper limit to those values.

Whether fantastical or not, all museums have the same basic setup: you create ways to take guests’ money, via ticket booths near the entrance, donation boxes near exhibits, gift shops, vending machines, and other means. Exhibits are brought in via helicopter, as you send some of your staff on expeditions around the world to find new exhibits with which to expand your museum. You can add and remove walls, and create dedicated rooms, some of which are necessary in order to progress, like a research lab where you can send some employees in order to unlock new items, such as interactive exhibits which help children acquire knowledge as they do not absorb it from regular exhibits.

There are five main locations to unlock in all, and once you unlock others, you’ll then start to spend your time individually managing each. Each location can earn up to five stars by a museum rating body, and these stars usually come with some new unlocks. You’ll usually reach a certain point in each museum where your curator level can only improve the museum to an extent, and you’ll need to switch over to one of your other museums in order to make real progress. This helps to ensure you won’t get bored of any single museum quickly, while changing gameplay up from time to time.

Prepare for Expeditions

The main draw of each museum is its exhibits. Besides hiring assistants to run shops, janitors to help maintain the location, and security guards to collect donations and keep children and would-be thieves off the exhibits, experts are available to hire. These experts are crucial, because they are required in order to send a group of employees on an expedition. Each expedition can vary in length, netting more experience points for each deployed employee, and at the end of most expeditions, your museum will receive a brand-new exhibit, or a piece of a larger exhibit, which once assembled will produce more Buzz and Knowledge than most other exhibits. You can send any type of employee on an expedition, some of whom have attributes which can help on a trip. Random events can occur on most expeditions, including some negative effects such as injuries, curses, or in the worst case, an employee can be reported as MIA, and never seen from again. Those MIAs can be particularly frustrating. With the right loadout of employees and items, though, you can prevent some or all of the negative events from occurring.

With over 200 exhibits to collect, alongside more than 350 decorative items to unlock, there is a lot of variety in what on the surface appears to be a simple game. While the main game provides some challenge, those who want something beefier will enjoy the pop-up museum challenges that can be encountered. These task you with running a pre-built museum, and meeting some sort of requirements, such as a security-focused challenge, where you have a limited budget, and must prevent exhibits from being stolen while also making enough money within a small amount of time. This requires decent knowledge of the game’s systems, and should challenge those who are up for something a little less laid back than the main game mode.

Build in Peace

With a focus on exhibits, more attention has been given to actually constructing each museum. You can put up all sorts of walls, queues, and decorations. You can build with the simulation paused, which is great for some uninterrupted build time, without needing to tend to any of the museum’s emergencies or other issues. Like any build mode in a simulation game, this can be one of the most relaxing activities in your otherwise hectic day. Just you, some music, and an idea.

Two Point Museum uses the Unity engine, and on the PS5 it runs like a well-oiled machine. Museums can get quite busy, with dozens of guests, staff members, interactive exhibits, and more animating all the time, and everything stays pretty smooth throughout. Load times are quick, and the menu-heavy interface scales well to large screens. The control scheme is pretty well adapted to controllers, as well. While you won’t be going through menus as quickly as if you had a keyboard and mouse, most actions are a few button presses away, and selecting the wrong thing is usually easily undoable.

Verdict

Two Point Museum is a great game to play if you’re looking for a chill, silly time. There’s challenge to be found for those who seek it, but it’s also fairly easy to progress if you’re not keen on running through the pop-up museums. If you enjoyed any Two Point game in the past, you’ll likely enjoy Two Point Museum, and at a launch price of $29.99 (or $39.99 for the Explorer Edition featuring some extra digital goodies), it’s a fun simulator that won’t break the bank.

Score: 9/10

Pros:

• A relaxing management game that dabbles in silliness and is generally chill.
• Hundreds of exhibits and decorations to collect.
• Essentially endless replayability.

Cons:

• Losing an employee to random chance can sometimes frustrate.

Two Point Museum review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.