I really appreciate the thought the Two Point series puts into exploring the management sim genre., While the genre is usually more about building a solid bottom line, entries like Two Point Campus have shown the team are good at saying sometimes, it’s ok to want things to be good for the sake of being good.
Having tried out a few hours of Two Point Museum, it really feels like the biggest stride taken in keeping that spirit alive. Museums aren’t exactly known for being financial multipliers- if anything they’re usually begging you for money to keep the lights on and being at the mercy of private collectors.
Making My Dream Museum In Two Point Museum
And yet, Two Point Museum is a charming break from all that. Money is still an object, of course, being needed to fund the growth of your museum and the people managing it. But while you could still run tickets like your museum was called The Eras Tour, the way the game recommends you raise funds is through having donation boxes near every exhibit.
Here, having high quality exhibits drives donations, which in turn allow you to hire more curators to maintain your exhibits and procure new ones by going on research expeditions. It’s a fun bit of idealism that works really well into the most fun part of these games- actually decorating the exhibits. I love that things like signboards and fake plants actually have a gameplay benefit, since they increase the Buzz value for said exhibits thus driving more of that sweet philanthropy.
On a mechanical level its’ really cool seeing exhibits not be tied to simply be shopping list items. The game becomes a lot more interesting because now you’re working with whatever exhibits you’re dealt with. Imagine if Two Point Hospital had randomized treatment rooms? “Sorry, we didn’t pull an MRI machine from the gacha, come back after our next 10 pull!”.
A Museum Lives And Dies By Its Dinosaurs
It especially helps because I spent a lot of time pulling for the holy grail of museum exhibits: dinosaur bones. Rather than get a whole skeleton in one, you get them in pieces, which means you’re going to need to hire multiple curators if you want your exhibits maintained while Dr Jones over here heads out to go find the remaining chunks of Stegosaurus.
Combine that with the map that actually requires you to clear certain excavation sites to get to the next one and you have a surprising amount of Two Point Museum happening, well, outside the museum.
Sure, it’s not you yourself heading out there, but I can totally see some players getting more obsessed with hitting a particular zone than actually building up their museums, and that’s a pretty interesting way to play a management sim.
Aside from my love of museums Two Point Museum feels very much worth checking out just to see where the developers want to take management sims next. I could easily see myself losing hours to this in my ultimate quest to recreate the Natural History Museum in London- if anything else I’ve got a new respect for just how much effort it was to house Dippy.
Two Point Museum launches digitally on March 5th, 2025 for Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, but is available from February 28th to purchasers of the Explorer Edition. The physical edition for PS5 launches March 4th.
