Two Point Campus
Got a yearning for learning?
The Two Point dev is back and is turning another apparently mundane environment into a pun-filled comedy playground. After transforming the healthcare system into a spectacular parade of peculiar illnesses in Two Point Hospital, the team are taking a crack at university life in followup Two Point Campus.
Campus follows the same formula as Two Point’s previous game. You’re tasked with running a university campus, which involves hiring staff, building facilities, and keeping an eye on the bills. But instead of trying to cure contagions and medicate the masses, you’re helping students get the ideal university experience with a wild variety of courses and classes. Planning a curriculum sounds tedious but Two Point has put its famed comedic spin on it, and it all begins with taking a setting that feels familiar.
“We’ve all had some form of experience with university,” explains the game’s creative director Gary Carr, “and the idea with a Two Point game is that we take relatable themes and ordinary things, but we try to put our twist on it and the twist tends to be quite extraordinary.”
Extraordinary is one word to describe Two Point Campus, but after our hands-on preview, the word we would use is bizarre. Students can take an eclectic mix of courses, from conducting experiments on giant machines that emit plumes of colourful smoke in Scientology class to messing around with the fabric of existence in the Virtual Normality course.
After introducing those courses, we’re tasked with building a staff room, student lounge, dormitories, and a library so that the students and faculty have everything they need. There was limited building potential in Two Point Hospital but with the team’s new ‘curated sandbox’ approach there are plenty more tools and the ability to build completely from scratch in Campus.
“We wanted people to make something bespoke,” Carr says. “There are templates for people who aren’t interested in being creative and don’t really want to do that, but we want people to be able to customise [the campus] and make it feel that it’s theirs.”
New features make Two Point Campus play out like a city builder. It’s incredibly easy to construct the campus you have in mind, and you’re given a long list of accessories to deck it out with. Two Point Studios’ comedy inspires your building too – how about erecting a castle for the Knight School students who will be competing in jousting competitions? We weren’t able to see all the different types of school, but the trailer shows students building giant robots, casting spells, and cooking up giant pepperoni pizzas.
SCHOOL’S OUT
One feature that surprises us is the relationship you build with the students. Usually in sim games that focus on building a business it’s easy to start seeing your customers as walking dollar signs, but Two Point Campus changes that relationship, putting you in a paternal role. It’s a refreshing attitude to have in a genre that usually only measures your successes in piles of cash.
“There’s a nurturing aspect of
Campus and it’s a thing that differentiates it from Two Point Hospital,” Carr says. “The patients were effectively just your fodder to build your hospital empire but in this, it’s really about caring about your students because if you don’t care for them, they will leave and then you get no money.”
You can’t just build a classroom, plonk a teacher inside, and be done, though. Students need libraries and course materials, but they also want fun things like societies, gigs, and events. There’s a lot, but fortunately you have the summer holidays when the students are away in which to revamp the campus before they return.
When students finish their threeyear course, those who have passed their classes will graduate. The team has plenty more ideas for the Two Point universe so expect more settings in the future. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll recognise a student from your campus in the wider world of the game. (We’re not crying, you are.)
“IF YOU DON’T CARE FOR [THE STUDENTS], THEY WILL LEAVE.”
IMPRESSIONS
Another kooky management sim from Two Point Studios made even better with the addition of plenty of creative freedom. We can’t wait to build a bizarre campus filled with oddball students.