Two Point Studios are back after the success of their comedic management simulators Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus – and you’ll never guess what you do in this new entry to their series.
Yes, that’s right, after letting you kill (or cure) hospital patients and ignore (or teach) students, Two Point Studios are putting you in charge of running a museum filled with ancient artefacts. What could possibly go wrong?
An excellently designed management sim which just oozes with wit and silliness (sometimes literally), Two Point Museum is a delight of a game.
While it’s not without its flaws – mostly due to the structure of its central campaign – there’s been so much love and charm poured into this game that I’m more than willing to forgive them.
Become the Best (or at least, the richest) Museum Curator
The beauty of Two Point Museum is that you’re not just running one museum. You’re running five. Each one has a different map, and a different theme to go with it (palaeontology, the supernatural, underwater life, space, or science).
Each also comes with its own list of objectives as you expand the museum and find new exhibits, and at certain points during the main campaign you’re encouraged to switch to a different museum, trying out new ones or returning to old ones armed with new knowledge.
All of this is underpinned by the same mechanics, of course – at the end of the day they’re all museums. No matter the theme of the place you’re currently running, you need to sell tickets, find new exhibits, design your museum, and keep both your staff and your guests happy.
There are cafeterias and gift shops and security rooms you need to keep up and running. You can get new exhibits by sending staff away on expeditions, which have their own risks, costs, and rewards, and though there’s a different map for each of the main themes they all largely work the same.
For the most part, these mechanics aren’t anything particularly unfamiliar to those who have played a management sim before – you need to keep track of a lot of different elements and deal with them by using your resources, and as you go along, your museum becomes larger with more moving parts to keep well-oiled.
This familiarity is not a negative, however – Two Point Studios know how to make managing an organisation feel good to do, with controls that are well-explained and easy to grasp. There’s always a list of objectives by your side, which will take you through the basics and only introduces some mechanics in later stages.
It’s a little simplistic at times but it feels satisfying to play, regardless of whether you’ve played a hundred management sims before or this is your first one.
What I’ve said might have you thinking that the five different types of museums are just reskins of each other, flavourful but with the same substance, but that is very much not the case.
Mechanics like needing to keep your staff from quitting or stopping thieves from stealing your exhibits are the same across all the museums, sure, but for displaying and taking care of your exhibits – probably the most prominent part of the game – it’s very different.
Supernatural museums need to contend with the demands of captured ghosts (and the demands of re-capturing said ghosts when they escape), while the curators of science museums need to stop their many machines from constantly catching fire.
Don’t even get me started on the space museums, where you need to collect special batteries and arrange them around your exhibits to power strange alien technology.
As you go through the main campaign, you’ll be taught new mechanics by visiting each museum in turn and completing a list of objectives there. It’s not completely on rails, however – the map is open for you to revisit old museums at any time, even if there’s not a whole lot of new things to do there or it won’t lead to huge progress on your overarching goals, and lets you choose what order to do new museums in.
If there’s one you’re particularly interested in, you can spend more time there, and if there’s one you’re not really into that’s fine as well. This back-and-forth design really keeps you engaged.
As a bonus, there’s also three challenge museums, which are pre-designed and test your skill in a particular area (such as upping the crime rates to a ridiculous degree and asking you to stop the exhibits from being stolen, or asking you to go crazy on marketing campaigns).
It’s a fun little extra, and a good way to test your skills – plus it lets you see what a nicely designed, not-messy museum can look like – though it is a little sad that there’s only three of them. It definitely feels like there was more they could have done there, and if you like those kinds of bespoke challenges, you may feel a little disappointed.
At some points the pacing does feel a little off in the campaign, however. Once you’ve completed one list of objectives, you’re given a new one, and while some of these are easy and quick to be ticked off (or at least, easy to understand and work towards) others are far more slow going.
There are some sections where you can feel like you’re spinning your wheels, not making much progress towards your goals – but, eventually, you can work your way out of the mire. Plus there’s the fact that the campaign assumes it’s been a while since you’ve played a management sim – which is great for newbies and casual players, but might be a little frustrating for experienced players.
The switching back and forth between different museums might also frustrate some who just want to go crazy on one area, but in all honestly it’s telegraphed well enough that it shouldn’t cause too many issues. Besides, if you’re really desperate to build one perfect museum with no distractions, there’s always sandbox mode.
Go Off the Rails (again)
As much as I enjoy following a to-do list, there’s no denying the joy of a sandbox mode where you can create the beautifully-designed museum of your dreams without worrying about the cost. Or, you know, play the game on hard mode.
Two Point Museum’s sandbox mode is excellent in its thoroughness and simplicity. You choose what museum map you want to start at (from the five in the campaign). You choose a mode – creative, career, or hardcore.
The three modes are about what you would expect – creative is lenient with the funds, career gives you a more standard museum-building experience (while still feeling a little different from the campaign), and hardcore lets you really test your skills by giving you less resources and more challenges.
Those who like to get into the thick of things and customise exactly to their liking have plenty of more granular options which let you choose aspects such as your starting funds, starting plot size, level of threat from thieves, and objective progression (among others).
It’s nothing flashy, but it does the job well, and is sure to satisfy those looking for just a little more playtime with a little less handholding.
Who said Museums were Boring?
Two Point’s management sim games are well-made and do a good job of leading you through learning the mechanics without letting you get too bored, sure, but what really makes these games iconic is the humour that underpins it all. Above the chill music-to-build-a-museum to soundtrack, you’ll get infrequent PA announcements and radio cut-ins.
Some of them are informative, reminding you when staff are close to resigning or when there’s a guest stuck behind a wall (there’s multiple of those ones, which tells you all you need to know about how Two Point Studios expect some people to play this game), but not all of them strictly down to business, and even those that are informative also just add a well-enjoyed bit of levity to the whole shebang.
They’re funny, unexpected, well-voiced, and varied enough that they don’t repeat too often – making them a welcome addition to the game. Some even connect to each other and have a bit of a storyline to them!
Now, not everyone will like the humour of the game’s PA and radio system. That’s fine – I’m boring sometimes too. But here once again, the game’s carefully-considered design steps in. Not only is it easy to find the button to turn off these witty interjections, but they’ve put the button to turn off all game audio entirely loud and proud on the pause screen.
Those who like to listen to podcasts or their own music as they play management sims, I see you – and so, apparently, does Two Point Museum.
If that wasn’t enough, the game’s humour isn’t just in the PA system either – it’s soaked right through the game. There’s plenty more to be found in the exhibits and the way the guests interact with them. Because I’ll say this much – I’d go to museums more often if they had some of these exhibits.
There are cheese slugs, and frozen monobrows, and plants that turn people into vampires (and another one that turns people into clowns – have fun considering the implications of that one).
Guests can’t interact with the exhibits in normal, respectful ways either, so you’ll get to see them lounge back on what is clearly a man-eating plant and discover the reasons why you probably shouldn’t do that. Plus, of course, all of the exhibits and décor have silly little text descriptions for you to read through. They won’t have you laughing out loud or anything, but once again, it’s all just a little bit of fun that further enhances the playing experience.
The visuals aren’t insanely amazingly show-stopping or anything, nor is the music, but once again it’s well-polished and simply makes the experience of playing it look and sound better. The whole game looks great, in fact, and if you have the skill and want to do so you can make your museum look positively gorgeous. And even if you don’t, it still looks pretty decent.
There’s also just the simple fact that besides (and beside) the humour you can really just tell that a lot of love and work has been put into this game – both in terms of the big flashy aspects, and in terms of all the little details.
I’ve already mentioned the funny little interactions guests can have with the exhibits (and each other) but what I haven’t said is that for many exhibits there are multiple, bespoke animations.
If you zoom in to almost any area in your museum and take your hands off the controls to just sit and watch for a minute, you’ll see a whole bunch of fun little details that give this ridiculous world life. Two Point’s iconic sense of humour and dedication to their craft really shines in this one, and it just makes the game such a delight to play.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot of fun to be had in Two Point Museum, whether it’s making the prettiest museum possible, the one that earns the most, or just trying to torture your guests. Watching it go from a tiny venue with one or two exhibits to a sprawling centre filled with crazy features is fun and deeply satisfying, as is putting in the work to make that evolution happen.
Two Point Museum is genuinely funny, deeply enjoyable and well worth sinking plenty of time into – which is what I know I’ll be doing long after this review.
FOUR AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Highlights: Great sense of humour, wide range of exhibits, long campaign
Lowlights: slight pacing issues
Developer: Two Point Studios
Publisher: SEGA
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows, Linux, MacOS
Available: March 4, 2025
Review conducted on PC via Steam with a release code provided by the publisher.
