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When Two Point Hospital came out years back, many of us old school gamers rejoiced! We’ve finally a true successor to Bullfrog’s Theme Hospital! Little did we realize, like Bullfrog’s Theme series (which came from Theme Park), that Two Point Hospital would also become into a multi-themed franchise! First came Two Point Campus…and then now (or rather, next year), Two Point Museum!
SEGA kindly gave us access to a preview build of the game (developed by series creator Two Point Studios) for ONE day back in November. From 5PM on November 18 to 5PM on November 19, I was given free, restricted access to the first three museums in the game.
One was the tutorial/ first level, while the other two was one set in a haunted location, and another an aquarium/ museum combo stage.
I thought I’d spend about an hour or two playing…but my first session with the game, I played it for 9 hours and some change! If that’s not a sign a game is fun, I don’t know what is.
In Two Point Museum, instead of taking charge of a hospital or a college, you’re taking the reins of (wait for it…) a museum! Or rather museums. Spread across Two Point County. The previous curator went MIA and it’s up to you to fill in for him.
Quirky premise, but just roll with it.
As a fan of the series, I was able to step right into the game with zero issues. The UI is similar, the fundamentals are similar and the goal’s similar as well. The tutorial’s awesome too, making you accomplish goals that slowly introduce new game mechanics while you’re running your first museum.
Now you no longer need to think about the rooms (like in past games). You need to think how to place your exhibits, while decorating the area around them too! All so you can get them looking good for your visitors, who will then donate cash to help you run your museum.
There’s a lot of carryover from the Two Point games to make Two Point Museum feel like a return to a familiar place. Yet, there’s a lot more to Two Point Museum once you get over the similarities too.
For one, the game now gives you much more control.
Crowds can be shepherded smartly through your museum, with new additions like partitions and one-way doorways. You can finally direct traffic so that people keep moving along, while making sure that your staff can easily traverse your museum with Staff Only doors!
It might seem like a tiny upgrade (perhaps it is), but it’s a monumental one in-game.
There seems to be much more people on-screen at once time in this game than in previous ones so crowd management is essential. I did encounter some AI pathing issues (particularly with the toilets) so I really hope that the final game irons these out. It also highlights how packed your museum can get, especially with tours thrown into the mix.
Right now, the AI can get stuck with cramped spaces (I like to make my toilets 5 x 2), resulting in your staff just standing there, immobile as their stats drop. It led to a lot of issues with my staff not being able to fulfil their needs and threatening to quit. Since this wasn’t an issue in past games, I have no doubts that the bug’s going to be nixed come release date.
Other bugs included NPC spirits popping out (and getting stuck outside) of their containment room, NPC portraits not matching their character models and the game showing you an excavation crate (where your exhibits are stuffed in before you unpack them) on the helipad when the chopper isn’t even back yet.
All these issues should be fixed by next year’s launch.
Two Point Museum’s gameplay loop is radically different from the other games too. You don’t build treatment or classrooms. Sure, you build staff facilities (like the ever familiar Staff Room) but your exhibits will be the crux of what you do.
However, your museum’s not going to get those dropped into your lap.
You’ll have to send out your staff (via a cute helicopter that looks like a dinosaur!) to various locations to excavate them. Areas are all themed, so one map might have fossils, while another might deal with supernatural exhibits or biological oddities. You send a crew out (the requirements depend on the area), wait a few days and then see what they bring back.
Every area has multiple goodies to excavate, though the items you bring back are random each time. I found that longer expeditions (you can set the length from 3 types) tend to bring back rare goodies, though that may just be wishful thinking on my part.
You can also task your staff to research stuff!
From items to bring with them on excavations, to new rooms and attractions, researching is crucial to get to the some of the new stuff in the game.
Everything is done with the kitschy tongue-in-cheek humor the series is known, and that had me chuckling quite a bit through out my session.
From the self-referential announcements, to the weird ass rooms (you can literally create a ghost tank that you can stuff spirits in so your visitors can ogle them) to the kooky objects you can excavate (like a diskette fossil), Two Point Museum is just as endearing as the other games that came before.
I love that Two Point Museum is not gearing up to be just a one-trick pony. It also incorporates aquariums into the mix.
In the preview, I was able to build and stuff 2 aquariums full of fishes; one for temperate fishes and one for tropical ones. The Starfish was the best. It got a guffaw out of me the first time I beheld its glorious looks.
It’s a nifty addition, as you’re not just in charge of creating an aquarium, you have to stock it properly with heaters and the like to make sure your fish survive.
In fact, heating and cooling play a much bigger role this time around.
You’ll actually need to build coolers to keep the temperature down for your frozen exhibits. You’ll also need to build heaters and humidifiers to keep biological exhibits (like the huge ass plants) alive. Careful planning, segregation of zones and strategic placement of walls will be a much more important aspect of Two Point Museum if the short preview is any indication.
Weirdly the achievement list for the game was fully online with the preview.
I even managed to snag three of them!
I don’t know what will happen to them when the full game hits next year, but I hope they’ll stick around. At the very least, it’s sure to confuse people who look at my profile and see the dates on the achievements predate the game’s release by months!
Performance was fine in the three stages I tried. I played with everything maxed out, on 4K and only encountered slowdown when I zoomed out to the extremes. Regular viewpoints (as in a decent zoom distance) ran without a hitch, even with a lot of stuff happening on-screen.
The preview has no DLSS, FSR or XeSS tech. I’m not sure whether those will make into the final build but they’re not in the preview for sure. I spent time meddling in the menu just to make sure! I also didn’t have time to test out the game on my ROG Ally X, which is a shame. I was too engrossed playing it on my desktop to stop!
Now that the preview is over, I honestly can’t wait for the game to finally hit on March 4 2025 so I can finally get back to building my haunted museum again. SEGA definitely has another hit on their hands with this one.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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