The games in the “Two Point” series have an enormously high engagement factor and game mechanics reminiscent of “The Sims.” The new title “Two Point Museum” (PC, Mac, PS5, Xbox Series) costs €30 on Steam at release and has received fantastic reviews.
What kind of game is this? In “Two Point Museum,” you manage various museums, must organize research expeditions, keep your staff happy, and ensure that visitors wander through your museums satiated and satisfied, hopefully learning something along the way.
Challenges include pesky thief gangs stealing your exhibits and annoyed staff members who constantly want to go to the bathroom, demand more money, or have absurd luxury requests like regular meals or breaks. And on these expeditions, a staff member might be lost if you’re not careful.
In “Two Point Museum,” you will build relatively few museums focused on fossils, the supernatural, aquatic creatures, research, and space – but these few museums will be visited multiple times and continuously expanded.
You can watch the trailer for the Steam game here:
How many players does Two Point Museum have? On Steam, the game peaked at 17,455 simultaneous players. This is double what its direct predecessor, Two Point Campus, achieved, but only about half as many as the series origin, “Two Point Hospital,” in September 2018.
The hospital simulation Two Point Hospital
already had established predecessors like Theme Hospital. A museum simulation is rather uncharted territory.
Enthusiastic reviews praise a clever innovation in the genre
This is what the reviews say on Steam: With 95% positive reviews, the ratings from players on Steam are exceptionally strong. In comments, it says:
“There are so many details in the gameplay and in the decorative items. Building and decorating the buildings is much better than in the old games. Different types of guests have different needs. This gives me the vibe of flash games that I played earlier.”
“It’s the best part of the Two Point games. One of the cleverest ideas I’ve seen in the genre for a long time is that you have to switch between museums to progress. This prevented me from burning out on a single museum like before.”
“Very well-designed game. I think the way it brings various aspects of traditional management simulations into a new format is really well done.”
collect starsto progress.
High engagement factor, RPG aspects, and a lot of charm characterize Two Point Museum
This is the impression of MeinMMO editor-in-chief Schuhmann: I bought Two Point Museum myself, but at the “regular release” on March 4 for €30, not the somewhat silly early release for €40. I have now spent 23 hours with Two Point Museum and can fully recommend it.
It is remarkably polished and bug-free even at release. Occasionally, visitors might get stuck or something might bug out, but that’s not a problem.
Compared to Two Point Campus, which I have also played extensively, the progression is cleverly designed, with switching and revisiting museums.
The expeditions work similarly to browser games: there are prerequisites your staff must meet for the expedition to run smoothly
. If you do not meet these challenges, you will receive penalties, including the loss of staff. So you’d do well to level up your staff in the small role-playing
aspect of the game and train them with the right attributes.
Missing in Action.
Ultimately, the appeal of such a simulation is that you build your museums so they run automatically and everything functions smoothly. In all this bustling, it’s about bringing order to chaos.
The games in the Two Point series are charming, run at a relaxed pace, and have an extremely high engagement factor. For people who enjoy “The Sims,” this is a clear recommendation.
The positive reviews with decent player numbers on Steam show that Two Point Museum has been very successful for a niche of players that it reaches and appeals to – however, it is not a game for almost all strategy players, such as Manor Lords, which has achieved over 173,000 simultaneous players. Two Point Museum is smaller but finer.
A strategy game that I can recommend if you find games like Two Point Museum too relaxed and need a higher pulse rate while playing is Against the Storm: I spent 50 hours playing a game on Steam in 4 days – no city-building game has caught me like this in 30 years
