Two Point Museum Review

Two Point Museum is the latest management simulation game from Two Point Studios, renowned for the successful Two Point series, including Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus. From the operating room to the classroom, players will now take on the challenge of handling their own museum, and all of the bones that come along with it.

In this engaging new installment, players must efficiently manage staff, ensure guest satisfaction, and craft innovative exhibits to attract buzz and secure donations. The challenges involve addressing employee concerns, rising costs, and security issues, such as exhibit theft and disturbances caused by children.

It’s time to wear that curator hat and take the reins at Two Point Museum!

Freedom to Create!

Two Point Museum excels in providing an easy onboarding experience, especially for players new to simulation games. Management sims, like Two Point games, can quickly become overwhelming, but Two Point Museum succeeds in creating a tutorial session that advances at just the right pace while keeping things engaging and entertaining, ensuring a low barrier to entry.

Two Point Museum starts you out at a fresh new museum that features prehistoric relics, including dinosaur bones and fossils. As you progress in the campaign, you will be taking on different themed museums, ranging from supernatural-themed ones to Marine Life or Botanical museums that have their own fair share of quirky features.

After a few hours of gameplay, you’ll begin earning stars that reflect your skills as a curator. These stars enable you to take on more challenging tasks, allowing you to apply what you’ve learned at a higher level. As you earn more stars, you’ll also accumulate in-game currency, called Kibosh, which lets you further customize your museums to match your unique style.

The difficulty spike can catch you off guard when you least expect it, making it helpful to pause the game before it becomes overwhelming. There are numerous mechanics and systems to consider, and at times, you may realize that you’ve overlooked certain features. While it’s easy to focus on a specific part of your museum, it’s easy to forget other aspects.

In my experience, the key challenge is staff management. You begin with four basic staff members: a specialist, an assistant, a janitor, and a security guard. As these staff members improve their skills, they evolve into more versatile workers who can take on specialized roles. For instance, janitors can become mechanics, and assistants can advance to managers who oversee the museum. It’s also important to learn how to manage their salaries to keep them satisfied. While the tutorial covers the basics, I find that the more advanced functions require personal self-study, which can be something that might turn off more casual gamers.

The Expeditions gameplay mechanic stands out as a highlight, enabling players to discover exhibits through entertaining mini-games. These exhibits are crucial for museum progress and can be enhanced with information displays and decorations to attract visitors. Additional revenue streams include gift shops, restaurants, and donation boxes.

As players acquire better exhibits from expeditions, they can design their museum around these items, optimizing their use. Information displays can be set up to educate guests, while decorations can generate more buzz and attract visitors. Additionally, players can monetize their museum through gift shops, restaurants, and donation boxes. Buzz is somewhat a currency or resource that allows you to grow your museums even further, so the more buzz, the better!

A significant gameplay shift in Two Point Museum is the move away from room-based gameplay seen in Two Point Campus and Two Point Hospital. While previous games focused on specific rooms triggering particular gameplay, Two Point Museum centers around exhibits, which do not need to be displayed in specific rooms.

This newfound freedom allows players to shape their museums according to their preferences. Whether players wish to express themselves creatively through intricate museum designs or focus on efficient management, Two Point Museum offers the flexibility to pursue either path.

More Risk, More Reward

As you progress through the campaign, challenges will become more demanding, and as your star level increases, so do the demands to maintain your museum’s relevance within Two Point County. If you follow a safe route, you will generate less buzz, causing visitors to grow bored and resulting in a loss of customers. However, maintaining relevancy will also increase the demands.

Finding a way to stay within the radar and earn a steady profit while fulfilling campaign objectives is generally achievable. However, to build the best possible museum, you will learn that taking more risks yields better rewards.

Guests will find ways to cause trouble, such as vandals “redecorating” your museum, thieves stealing exhibits, and misbehaving children. This adds to the challenge of running a museum, keeping up with consumer demand, and balancing staff happiness. While it is perfect for the management enthusiast, decorators may find it more challenging to process.

Expeditions will also become more challenging as you expand your repertoire. Initially, it’s easy to manage exhibits you’ve collected, but generating buzz and meeting conditions to unlock new expedition areas is essential for progress.

This can significantly gate progress since unlocking new areas requires advancing your museum to a higher difficulty level. Unlike previous games, which had all discoverable items readily available, Two Point Museum requires specific conditions to be met and exhibits to unlock via expeditions before you can fully progress.

While this may be a drawback for some players, it presents a rewarding challenge for those seeking it. Players looking for additional challenges can explore the map’s further reaches, requiring higher-level staff and better facilities.

After completing the main campaign, you can tackle challenge levels or Sandbox mode, allowing creativity to flourish or focusing on higher management challenges.

Presentation-wise, Two Point Museum is highly entertaining, with every feature animated, resulting in hilarious visual humor. With various themed museums, there are many ways to entertain yourself once the entire museum is built and observe how exhibits and attractions interact with staff and guests.

The announcer and different radio shows add humor and break the monotony once you’ve found your sweet spot in building and tweaking settings. Additionally, achievement stamps track your accomplishments, providing hours of enjoyment.

PC and Steam Deck Performance

We played Two Point Museum on the PC, and here’s the system we used to play with:

• Ryzen 5 5600x, 16 GB DDR4 3600 RAM, NVIDIA 4070 Super, 1TB NVMe SSD
• Steam Deck OLED

The Two Point titles have not been the most demanding games in terms of system requirements, and that trend continues with Two Point Museum. On our PC, even at the highest graphical settings, we hit a consistent 90fps, even going as high as 110-120fps on a capped frame rate. While it doesn’t lock at 120fps, constantly fluctuating between 105-115fps range, this is generally more than acceptable for this type of game.

Playing on a Steam Deck OLED, Two Point Museum maintains a steady 30-40fps (depending on your preference) at low to medium graphics settings. We recommend playing on medium settings, as pushing it to low will make many textures look blurry, and medium settings provide enough detail to retain the enjoyable feel of the game. Capping the frame rate at 60fps is doable, and while it doesn’t hit that limit, you’ll hover around 40-50fps for the most part. You can extend your battery life by setting a TDP limit of around 10-12 while maintaining the frame rate at 30-40fps, which sounds great.

That said, pushing Two Point Museum to high settings on the Steam Deck OLED is not advisable. While playable with some shiny effects added, expect frame rates to dip to the low 20s, greatly compromising the game’s feel. For such a tiny trade-off on a small screen, we would advise against this, so keep it in medium settings for a fun time!

Personally, I prefer playing Two Point Museum on the PC with a keyboard and mouse setup as it’s easier to get into different areas of the museum and manage the museum better. You can also accurately set up your exhibits with the mouse compared to the controller set up of the Steam Deck.

The Steam Deck provides the portability of the game so you can have it on the go as you continue your manage your museum when you’re away from your rig at home. The gamepad, however, provides a second best option for setting up your museum, not giving you the most optimized way of control seen in a keyboard and mouse setup. While this can be a barrier for entry for console gamers, a keyboard and mouse option is the best way to experience Two Point Museum.

Verdict: Buy It!

Two Point Museum is an engaging and accessible management simulator that caters to all players eager to dive into the action. Its diverse themes and challenges offer countless hours of enjoyment for returning fans and newcomers.

The game introduces new mechanics like Expeditions, which provide a taste of adventure and move away from room-based gameplay, granting players greater creative freedom. While there are entry barriers, such as gradual difficulty increases and expedition conditions, patient players will find overcoming these obstacles rewarding.

Whether you play on a PC or home console or take it on the go with your Steam Deck, Two Point Museum promises an entertaining experience.

*Two Point Museum was reviewed on the PC and Steam Deck with a review code provided by the publisher.