Two Point Hospital
Another dose of business sim from Theme Hospital’s creators
PC
Two Point Studios has a chronic case of the giggles. It is visibly, and audibly, delighted to be working on a spiritual successor to Theme Hospital, the 1997 title that won hearts with its smart blend of sim management and goofy humour. Two Point Hospital is a return to the good old days for ex-Bullfrog and Lionhead Studios developer Gary Carr. “I wanted to work on something like Theme Hospital again, appealing to a broader range of people,” he says. “Fable had a broad fanbase, but to be honest, that was just not my thing. God games are the games I really enjoy working on.”
Sensing change at the now-shuttered Lionhead, Carr approached fellow developer, and now co-founder, Ben Hymers. “I didn’t want to drag Ben into an uncertain future when he had a perfectly good job,” Carr says. “Luckily, he was prepared to take the risk.” Hymers still needed an income, working at the Sega-signed Playsport Games while the business plan began. (“Games shouldn’t be this grown-up, but these days, you have to justify how you’re going to make it,” Carr laments.) With new contacts at Sega, and the pitch of a fresh take on the ’90s god game, it was finally time for the fun bit.
Two Point Hospital looks as screwy as its 21-year-old inspiration, tasking you with building, managing and making profitable medical facilities designed to treat a variety of humorous fictional illnesses. While the grim, poppable Bloaty Head was the poster disease of Theme Hospital, it’s Light-Headedness that sets the tone in the new title’s launch trailer, as one poor sufferer awakes to find he has a giant lightbulb for a head. And without the restrictions of ’90s technology, Two Point
Hospital’s strange scenarios will be even more complex. Building waiting rooms and operating theatres is still a few clicks away, but myriad overlapping systems convolute. “There’s a bunch of different character traits that mean something this time,” lead designer Ben Hoskins says. “People are argumentative, or charismatic.” Self-styled entertainers might go dancing across wards, to various reactions from its inhabitants and subtle influences on your profit margins. Everything is designed to have a knock-on effect, heightening challenge and comedy. “It makes you want to play the same scenario in different ways to see what happens,” he says. “If I place coffee machines everywhere, and everyone’s running around with a caffeine buzz, the toilets are going to be full – but they’ll get to appointments quicker.” We can’t help but imagine the speedruns. “Hopefully that’s the kind of thing that will happen on Twitch or YouTube,” Hymers says. “People going, ‘What happens if I only hire people with this personality trait, or only put down coffee machines?’” The mainstream draw of a simulation is being able to poke something and see what happens, and in that sense, Two Point Hospital’s evolved approach to an age-old genre is well-suited to the current online-gaming climate. Two Point Hospital will have cooperative and competitive modes, and enticing daily challenges. An opt-in superbug scenario, for instance, requires constant in-game research on the part of multiple players to treat. “We thought that was a cool way of getting the community to collaborate to overcome something bigger,” Carr says. Indeed, it’s collaboration and creativity that drives the team. “The majority of people here have come from Lionhead, where you do feel like you’re a cog in a machine,” Hymers says. “Here, everyone is creating stuff.” Carr continues: “It’s brilliant. We all bring it all together, and enjoy coming to work each day. Some of the guys here are friends I’ve worked with for over 20 years.” He laughs. “It’s great that we can still do this and get away with it.”
Everything is designed to have a knock-on effect, heightening challenge and comedy