In 2018, Two Point Studios released their first game, Two Point Hospital, introducing a new generation of gamers to the wacky and offbeat world of Two Point County. Now, they invite players to return to their claymation-inspired world to take on administrative tasks for a variety of college campuses in Two Point Campus. Much like its predecessor, Two Point Campus uses wordplay and slapstick humor to make an otherwise rigid institution seem endearing.
In my Two Point Campus hands-on preview, I had the opportunity to look at just a few of the campuses that players will be responsible for in the game. Little did I know then how much larger the Two Point campus would be when it was completed. While I was already impressed by the game’s humor and creative design choices, it turned out that it was the challenge and attention to detail that ended up captivating me.
Two Point Campus: What You’ll Like
If you’re not familiar with playing a management simulator, you’ve come to the right place at Two Point Campus. The first few school scenarios that the game throws new players into are relatively tame and serve as effective tutorials, allowing players to understand basic gameplay concepts such as caring for their students and establishing a class curriculum. These tutorials teach players the importance of setting up vending machines and benches, as well as building dormitories and classrooms. Each scenario rewards a star for completing a series of tasks. The tasks become more difficult and completing all the challenges for a given scenario will reward the player with a three-star ranking. Players must collect the stars to unlock additional college scenarios on the Two Point County map.
Scenarios begin during the summer break, with the player controlling when they’re ready to start the academic year. During the downtime of the preschool year, players can take on the construction of new campus buildings and landscaping, and make adjustments to the classes offered on their campus. There may also be some upcoming year requirements that the player must meet before they can get started, such as: B. hiring additional teachers or building classrooms that meet the needs of the courses offered. Once your campus is ready, you can start the year.
Housing students, providing (questionable) nutritious snack options, and a path to a degree are just the beginning of managing a campus. A lot of things can – and do – go sideways in classic two-point slapstick fashion. Your campus can be swamped by frog rain, cursed by a jealous witch who sends meteor showers just to make you miserable, or even be the victim of rabid sports fans who stalk your hard (or hardly) working students and staff just before the big game bother . However, addressing most issues you encounter on your campus is as simple as providing an adequate, well-trained workforce.
Typically, management simulators on consoles have trouble porting keybindings and menu shortcuts to controllers. Even Two Point Studio’s previous game struggled to be controller-friendly for Xbox release. Thankfully, the studio seems to have learned from its past mistakes, as both the user interface and button mapping for Two Point Campus were designed with the intention of being controller-friendly from the start. The game’s menus, while robust, are compact and well thought out, allowing each item to be accessed with just a few key presses or mouse clicks.
The menus can provide players with valuable data to plan their strategy on how to overcome certain scenarios. For example, some campuses may be too cold and a temperature overlay can be used to verify that the radiator position is sufficient to warm up students. Likewise, an overlay can be toggled on or off to check things like student or staff satisfaction and campus cleanliness. If a student is at risk of failing or dropping out, a warning will appear, allowing the player to focus on that particular troublemaker and deal with them accordingly.
Improved menus and controller bindings aren’t the only upgrades Two Point Campus offers over Two Point Hospital, however. The Two Point Campus development team has put together an all-new facial animation rigging system that breathes extra life into the already hilariously animated Two Point Countians. These new animations add to the liveliness of the characters and make them more believable in this absurd world they are part of.
Two Point Campus: What You Won’t Like
Despite all of the things Two Point Campus does right, there are still some design choices that feel like missteps that pop up from time to time. The game’s earliest levels are incredibly simplified and can feel like they’re holding back more advanced players, even when it comes to their three-star challenges. Alternatively, outside of these tutorial scenarios, the difficulty increase is surprisingly sharp and might be off-putting to someone new to management simulators.
Two Point Campus uses both a cash currency and an in-game currency called Kudosh. Kudosh is also necessary to unlock items related to student classes, such as: B. class-specific bookshelves or learning stations. These items may be required for a student to pass a class, but there are no lists of required items for students or any indication that these may become necessary items before they actually do. For some items, such as B. class-specific bookshelves, they cannot even be unlocked before a student needs them. If you spend your limited amount of Kudosh before receiving a notification that those items are needed, you can quickly find yourself in an awkward situation where a large number of students are failing, considering dropping out, or refusing to pay their dues to count.
The more a player has problems, the more pop-ups and warnings start flooding the player’s screen. A notification may indicate that five students are considering dropping out, but then further notifications immediately follow for each individual student who has an issue. It can be nice to click on an alert and immediately focus on the problematic student so you can try to fix their problem, but when those alerts quickly take over the notification area, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and lose track of which one problem you have. re specifically trying to take care of it.
To add to the chaos and clutter, turning on Two Point Campus’ subtitles places them right above the notification area. The subtitles have white text with a semi-transparent black background which, when overlaid over the notifications text box, can create an absolute mess making both elements difficult to read.
Two Point Campus: Should You Buy It?
The management simulator genre can be a tough beast to tackle. Often games in this genre are bloated with menus and overlays, along with a multitude of choices that can quickly overwhelm a beginner. Two Point Campus does an excellent job of trimming the fat around the menus and options to simplify things enough for pretty much anyone to pick up and try out, while still leaving enough depth to keep hardcore Sim fans active too busy.
However, the menu layout means nothing if the game itself isn’t fun. This is where the Two Point Campus shines brightest. Classes you can offer on campus feature humorous puns like Cookery and Funny Business, and you can’t help but smile as you watch your students make a giant pizza in the kitchen you built as a classroom to bake. It’s incredibly satisfying to challenge a rival school to a cheeseball tournament and then, after winning, see your students come alive. Realistically, the idea of managing a college campus sounds boring and uninteresting, but through the sheer willpower of wit and whimsy, Two Point Studios has managed to make it not only a fun, but a hilarious experience.
Two Point Campus is an Xbox Play Anywhere title and can be accessed seamlessly on Xbox and PC. While I personally found the game better suited to playing with a mouse, the controller scheme is very suitable and it makes perfect sense to switch between the two platforms. Regardless of whether I was on PC or Xbox, the game ran flawlessly and never had any crashes or instability. Two Point Campus launches on Xbox Game Pass. Whether you’re a seasoned sim manager or looking to delve into the genre for the first time, you can try Two Point Campus.