After dozens of hours crafting picture-perfect museums, my only problem was that I couldn’t decide which one I liked better. Did I want to spend more time creating exhibits for aliens to communicate with a mysterious artifact? Or would I rather delve into the high seas and capture dazzling tropical fish for my aquarium?
Two Point Museum is a delightfully quirky management sim that revels in the weird and absurd, using every opportunity to provide unique gimmicks that shake up the gameplay. That vibrant sense of personality makes it stand out, but beneath the zany quirks is a rock-solid management system that can easily hook you for hours on end as you finetune each and every aspect of your exhibits. It’s far and away the best Two Point game yet, and it’s also one of the most engrossing management games in years.
Build It, and They Will Come
To get new exhibits, you’ll need to go on expeditions, which require money and staff (and can lead to unforeseen injuries).
Like Two Point Hospital and Campus, Two Point Museum is a tongue-in-cheek take on the management sim, where you’re given control of ridiculous galleries that run the gamut of themes, from prehistoric dinosaur bones to radioactive research centers and haunted exhibits. That sense of humor permeates every facet of the game, from hiring an employee named Dahlia Bolognese to running a marketing campaign for Goths so your carnivorous plant can turn them into vampires. The game consistently introduces some new element that’ll make you laugh, or shake your head in disbelief.
But the real reason all of this works is because of strong core mechanics and ingenious gimmicks. The foundation Two Point Museum is built on is vital to the game’s success: it’s a management sim where every element flows together so well that the seams are barely noticeable.
Every map starts with the same formula. You construct your buildings and specialized rooms, hire staff, send people on expeditions to find new exhibits, and then build those exhibits to be the best they can be. Of course, you’ll need to balance your budget while doing all this, ensuring your income is more than you’re spending on wages and maintenance. The core loop, then, is constantly finding bigger and better exhibits, decorating them to the max, and increasing the donations visitors give you. To this end, there are two stats you need to constantly keep in mind: Buzz and Knowledge.
Two Point Museum’s interface is incredibly easy to read and navigate.
Buzz is the enthusiasm guests have for your exhibits, which can be increased with investments like decorations and tours. More Buzz means more people talking about your museum, more guests, and bigger donations. Knowledge, meanwhile, is what guests are learning. This is boosted by ensuring each exhibit has a guide stand, and by putting exhibits through a machine called the “analyzer.” This boosts the level of all similar exhibits, but destroys the one you had analyzed. These core elements then need to be weighed against having the right number of Experts, Assistants, Janitors, and Security Guards employed.
This may sound a bit complicated, but Two Point Museum does a fantastic job of streamlining its systems so they’re easy to use, no matter your experience with management games. A very deliberately designed user interface lays out all the factors you need to keep track of in an easy-to-read format, giving you everything you need within just a single click. You never need to dig through convoluted menus, and the beautiful simplicity draws you into the cartoonish art style and humor before the game’s complexity emerges.
More elements are introduced as you progress. Marketing Offices let you attract specific kinds of guests or highlight an attraction. Cafeterias keep guests happy with food and give you specific items that can affect their enjoyment. Camera Rooms lets you strategically place cameras to spot robbers who try to steal your exhibits.
Imagination Station
On top of unique mechanics, every museum also has a distinct visual style.
These all help expand the core gameplay, but what really pushes Two Point Museum forward are the unique designs of each of its museums. The game’s campaign has you taking control of a handful of different installations across Two Point County, where you must fulfill objectives to impress the Culture Board and earn stars. Every museum has unique features that make you re-evaluate your relationship to the game’s mechanics.
One has you building aquariums and capturing fish, which you’ll need to put in tanks kept at the right temperature, take care of their food and water purifier needs, and even breed them. Another museum is built around a crash-landded alien artifact, forcing your experts to clean out scrap piles and find more artifacts that fit together like a puzzle. A third has you running a haunted museum, capturing ghosts to display, and decorating their rooms with items from the era they lived in to keep them happy.
It’s remarkable how different every museum feels, despite the fact you’re doing the same thing in each one. That’s a testament to how much time and care was put into the game’s design. The only real downside is that things can become incredibly chaotic as your museum gets bigger, but there are ways to automate your designs that help assuage some of this. The occasional bug also rears its head, like two employees accidentally working the same job.
There’s a real satisfaction in getting to the point where your museum can basically run itself.
Two Point Museum feels fresh even after you’ve put in 30 hours, as it constantly gives you some new toy to play with. It’s a sandbox that lets you craft the perfect museum, but gives you just enough guidance to keep you from feeling lost.
I can’t think of a single other game that lets you manage museums, and it’s baffling it hasn’t been done before now. Two Point Museum clicks within minutes of taking control, and it only grows more captivating with time. It delicately strikes a balance between complex and approachable, and it’s genuinely hard to imagine how Two Point Studios can improve on its formula from here.
9/10
Two Point Museum launches on March 4 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Inverse reviewed the PC version.
INVERSE VIDEO GAME REVIEW ETHOS: Every Inverse video game review answers two questions: Is this game worth your time? Are you getting what you pay for? We have no tolerance for endless fetch quests, clunky mechanics, or bugs that dilute the experience. We care deeply about a game’s design, world-building, character arcs, and storytelling come together. Inverse will never punch down, but we aren’t afraid to punch up. We love magic and science-fiction in equal measure, and as much as we love experiencing rich stories and worlds through games, we won’t ignore the real-world context in which those games are made.
