Management games are a small niche in the console market, but this sequel to Two Point Hospital is a welcome addition for the genre’s fans. As Two Point Studios’ latest release, Two Point Campus tasks its players with building, designing, and upgrading different university campuses so that its prospective students can find success during their post-secondary years! From fulfilling student requests, hosting clubs, upscaling the campus, and making sure you’re in the green after all that effort, Two Point Campus is an accessible yet complex title that anyone can pick up and play.
▍Simplistic Gameplay that Builds Upon Itself
Two Point Campus does an amazing job to guide beginners with its step-by-step tutorial, easing new entrants into the series with its witty dialogue, generous campus size, and plenty of funds for players to experiment with. Before long, the player is seamlessly drawn into the first level of the game proper, equipped with the knowledge to give students a chance to land an A+!
Players begin developing their university campus by building rooms for courses to be taught in, placing features in each room, and hiring teachers, janitors, and assistants to help run the place. The exact size and shape of the room are up to you, though each room needs to be at least a certain size in order to be valid. Other types of rooms are unlocked as progression is made, all done at a slow pace so that players won’t get overwhelmed with too many options. Each room comes with its own features that can be upgraded to improve its effectiveness.
Each member of the faculty possesses a set of skills and traits that impact their behavior. With enough progression, you can unlock the ability to train employees, allowing your staff members to obtain more skills or improve existing ones.
▍Complete Objectives to Grow Your Campus
As much as it would be nice to ignore responsibility and design the campus of your dreams, Two Point Campus wants to see positive results from the student body. Players are assigned several tasks that need to be fulfilled in order to increase the Star Rating of the university and act as a way to “beat” the current level and unlock the next one. Doing so will also unlock new facilities, courses, and objects that can be used for every level, including previous levels.
Thankfully, players are free to take their time and update the campus in order to meet these goals, provided that they don’t go bankrupt in the process.
▍Keep Track of Moods and Expenses!
A happy, healthy student is a learning student, and tired students are likely to be in danger of failing the year. The same principle applies to the faculty, as unhappy and tired staff members are less effective in performing their jobs. Holding events to raise spirits in Two Point Campus is a costly yet effective way to raise Happiness, but comes with its own requirements and time commitment; time that can be used for studying instead.
Each level in Two Point Campus introduces new mechanics to look out for that influence previous mechanics, like maintaining the temperature in each room. Notably, you can even encourage relationships between students with the right objects!
Just like in real life, if you’re struggling as a student then you should try to get some help as soon as possible to save your grade! Extra Tuition can help a struggling student catch up, but this might take several sessions. However, it’s worthwhile to help lagging students, as many objectives and random events check for the average grade of the student body.
Keeping track of expenses and moods is an engaging task in Two Point Campus, but it was never impossible. I had plenty of ways to turn around a bad situation so long as the problems were addressed early enough, and the ability to take out a loan is a nice safety net for a player who exceeded their budget. Simply sitting back and watching your success play out didn’t last long either, as the opportunity to add a new course showed itself soon after.
▍Choose Between Customization and Student Happiness
By adding rooms, hiring faculty, and purchasing objects to improve the look and ambiance of your campus, the Campus level will increase and reward players with “Kudosh.” This special currency can be used to unlock new fixtures to use, sometimes with a tangible effect on gameplay. Kudosh can also be used to unlock different paint jobs for certain rooms, adding another degree of customization that can be played with.
The biggest issue with this system is that Student Requests often needed items unlocked with Kudosh in order to complete, and there wasn’t enough to go around to fulfill every request that came in time, let alone spending any Kudosh on unlocking different paint jobs. Failing to fulfill a request wouldn’t significantly impact the student’s chances of succeeding for the year, but some requests ask for items that help a student complete their assignments.
Customizing the paths that students and staff can take is free, to the player’s benefit. Creating extra paths that lead to other entrances into a building is helpful in streamlining movement towards specific rooms, but the system can also be used to create personalized features that aren’t in the pre-set layout, like a special garden for couples.
▍Performance Issues Come with Success
The PS4 version of Two Point Campus has some difficulty, as there were moments where the game froze, and the sound looped over for several seconds; fortunately, the in-game time wouldn’t progress when this happens. On many occasions, the game world has to be paused so that a new room could be safely built.
Though I can’t speak for other consoles as this review was performed on the PS4, the game once crashed while trying to set up a new building! Not a lot of progress was lost due to autosave, but it’s disappointing that the game cannot handle a high number of students and faculty without negatively impacting the frame rate. One of the available outdoor plants also appeared bugged, appearing completely purple.
▍Two Point Campus Passes the Test!
Optimization issues aside, Two Point Campus provides some much-needed accessibility for a genre that’s typically unfriendly to players who don’t do well under pressure. Being able to pause the in-game world at any time to solve problems is a blessing, but veterans are able to speed up the game so that there isn’t too much downtime, Management games may not be for everyone, but Two Point Campus’ ridiculous antics and commentary is sure to bring tears to your eyes. For that, Two Point Campus gets a 4 out of 5.
