It’s been a long wait for Two Point Campus. Guess what though? The wait is finally over and we can enjoy this new entry from Two Point Studios; the same developers who gave us the innovative Two Point Hospital. My time with it has been full of fun and chaos simultaneously. However, are YOU going to enjoy it as much as I did? By the end of your read-through, you will know exactly who Two Point Campus is made for!
Presentation
Two Point Campus is similar to Two Point Hospital (if you ever played that one), however, it offers us a new setting; Campus management. As an administrator, you are in charge of the campus building, student life, staff handling, and everything in between. Despite how overwhelming this may seem, the game does an excellent job of introducing you to the core gameplay mechanics through a well-executed tutorial system.
Your first campus is set in the countryside. As such, expectations are not that high from you. Once you choose your campus, be it this one, or other ones you unlock, you can always expect a humorous background story about the institution. After that, the game will show you how to build your first room, which is the Science lab, hire a Scientology teacher and start the semester.
Everything feels intuitive and I found myself able to understand all the controls within 1-2 hours. I even found it very simple to move around the different menus and stats, which usually intimidate me in other games. While this was simple to me, if you find yourself struggling, you can always use the “pause, normal speed a,nd fast speed” options to take a moment and figure things out.
The graphics are very pleasant to look at. There is added attention to detail which adds to the overall experience. The rooms and buildings, as well as the decorations and items, are vibrant and fun to unlock. Whereas the student and staff members have plenty of expressions show. However, you can expect many students and staff members to look alike. Regardless, this was not an issue for me.
If you played Two Point Hospital, then you’re aware of the humor that drives the game. Humour in Two Point Campus is portrayed through the campus speakers and radio stations. For instance, a woman will make ridiculous comments like: “Your results are here, there’s no point in relying on luck anymore”. Despite the comments being relatable if you have attended university life, I found them getting repetitive very quickly. Not only that, but I also did not find the remarks as funny as they were in Two Point Hospital. Maybe it’s the fact that I like a dark sense of humor more (which was applicable to the Hospital theme, not the university one).
The music is very chill and relaxing. You will be listening to different tunes here and there and they get the job done. I believe anything too chaotic would have distracted me from focusing on the gameplay. As you will soon find out, gameplay mechanics can be intense, so anything that would add to the stress, even if it’s through the OST, would be unnecessary.
I will wrap up this section by quickly covering performance and controls. Even with my PC struggling to run many games, it had no problem running Two Point Campus. I did not experience any bugs or crashes even as I was playing the pre-launch version. As for controls, they are easy to memorize, which I always appreciate. Additionally, by playing using a mouse and keyboard, I saw that all my inputs were responsive. This is crucial for a management game like Two Point Campus.
Gameplay Loop
The gameplay loop revolves around three key elements: the campus building, students, and the staff. You have to master managing the three of them if you want to three-star your campuses and be the BEST administrator.
Campus Building
The game starts by slowly introducing you to how the building works. Each campus has its own unique course ranging from Scientology, Gastronomy, and Virtual Reality, to Knight School, and more. As such, you need different rooms for your students to study. For instance, a Scientology campus requires a Science Lab. The latter needs to be 5×5, have a door, a science hub, and a science board. Once you fulfill the prerequisites, you can choose to decorate the room and add more items to increase its attractiveness.
Whether it’s the campus as a whole, or rooms specifically, each needs to have a good environment, hygiene, and temperature. The environment increases as you add more decorations around such as posters, carpets, flowers, and more. Hygiene is maintained by having enough janitors and trash cans around campus. However, the temperature is maintained by adding things like the heat radiator if the campus is on the cold side of the map.
The fun part is that every time you advance to a new campus, you have new rooms to unlock which will make your students and staff members happy. This is why I recommend that you move to the next campus the moment you get a one-star. You can leave maxing out the stars for later. I say this because it will be very difficult to achieve three stars if you do not unlock everything that Two Point Campus has to offer.
As we cover the topic of unlocking items, you have to know about the Kudosh currency. Apart from the money you use, you also get Kudosh by completing every campus’s various challenges. These are used to unlock unique items, staff uniforms, flooring, and even wallpapers. This all adds to how much you’re able to further customize your campus.
While we covered a lot of the positive aspects, one problem that I had with the building aspect is when it comes to rotating items. Some items rotate by 45-degree increments, or 25-degree, while others it’s 90 at a time. I am not sure why can’t all the items be as flexible. Another problem is that some items have plenty of swatches, while others have none. For example, you could be placing a sofa that has 4 colors to choose from, then the side couch, which is very similar to it, is only offered in green. Here you end up with purple and green furniture in the same room that look terrible together.
Troublemakers… I mean, Students
Students are essential and you will have plenty who tend to enroll in every semester. Before you start your semester though, you can choose how many students you are willing to add to your campus. I always kept my course level at 1 since I found that I still had new applicants arrive regardless.
The exciting part is getting to see your students interact with the campus that you have built. This is all impacted by their personality but also their endless needs. You students need to stay happy, clean, well fed, energetic, and more. However, you are the one responsible for all of that.
This is where you have to build dormitories, bathrooms, showers, student unions, student lounges, and such to keep them happy. Not only that, but you can also encourage your students to join clubs like the Speed Walking one which will help them walk faster. Trust me, you’re going to need that one. Additionally, you can also throw them different parties to increase their happiness.
If you went to university, then you know that being happy can take you so far. Your grades, on the other hand, are very important. The same applies here. You have to make sure that all students are performing well. If you see that one of them is failing, you can send them in for 1-1 private tutoring. This will help them get their grades back on track. After that, as each semester ends, you get an overview of who passed, graduated, failed, or even got expelled.
Students are bound to make your life a bit harder too. They will send in requests for different things they need and others will sign petitions with them as well. Some will ask for things like a library to complete assignments. However, others are in Love Land and want a cupid statue to get the girl/boy of their dreams. Talk about priorities.
To wrap up, observing the students is very entertaining. You will see how they form new friendships and romances, create amazing projects and excel (or fail, which is not so amazing) every semester. However, one gripe I have is the fact that we cannot move students from place to place. I really wish we could since they can be so slow and even not so smart sometimes. So, I feel like a little help from us could have been useful.
Staff Members
Your students cannot teach themselves, right? You’re going to need a workforce to help you out. At Two Point Campus, you can hire professors, assistants, and janitors.
Professors can teach the main course of each classroom. They can also offer 1-1 private sessions to help struggling students. They can also help develop new projects which in turn unlock new items and rooms for your students to use. Assistants, on the other hand, help run food and drink kiosks as well as manage rooms like the student lounge and library. Finally, janitors help keep the campus clean to make sure that the attractiveness of the area is on point. They can also serve as security members as you progress through the campaign. Not only that, but they can also serve as mechanics and help upgrade different items to increase the level of your students.
Similar to students, staff members have different traits, some positive, and some negative. They also have needs. So, you need to provide them with rooms like the Staff Room where they can take a break from time to time. You also need to observe their negative traits and act accordingly. If a professor tends to get thirsty quickly, adding a water dispenser outside their class will be a lifesaver.
A fun factor in regards to staff members is that they can all be trained to become better. By unlocking the Training Room, you can teach your staff to become more efficient in skills they already have, or you can teach them new ones. For example, you can teach them to start moving faster, or be a motivational speaker, to name a couple.
Finally, you can increase your staff member’s salaries to keep them satisfied. Additionally, you can move them around to have them work where you want them to. This is the part that confuses me. I am not sure why we can move the staff around but not the students.
Is Two Point Campus the Game for YOU?
Two Point Campus has been a blast to play. I sank 15 hours in 2 days which is usually not that easy for me. I tend to quickly get distracted when playing a new game until it clicks with me. Two Point Campus had no problem hooking me to the gameplay loop. I felt like I was progressing and getting rewarded all the time. I enjoyed seeing my students graduate and felt attached to the campuses that I built. Even when the campuses were expanding and things got chaotic, I kept getting a sense of wanting to go back. I always wondered what I can do to have my students perform better. I also always wanted to see what new items, courses, gameplay mechanics, etc. I can unlock next. Enough about me though, will YOU enjoy it?
Two Point Campus Is the Game For You If You:
-Loved Two Point Campus and looking for a new theme
-Love macro and micro-management sims
-Feel okay with dealing with multiple elements at once (students, staff, challenges, temperature, etc.)
-Love to build and decorate campuses
-Love to have bite-sized sessions with games (you can stop playing at any moment, quick save and quit)
Two Point Campus Is NOT the Game For You If You:
-Get easily overwhelmed with many gameplay mechanics
-Find managing lists of staff and students exhausting
-Think this is different from Two Point Hospital (it’s not that different)
-Need the humor aspect to be on point (it really isn’t half as funny as Two Point Hospital was)
That’s All From Bubbles!
I hope this helped you decide if Two Point Campus is the game for you. As always, you can find me on Youtube, where I have an in-depth Before You Buy video about Two Point Campus and many other games. You can also chat with me on Twitter where I talk about gaming, fitness, food, life, and everything in between. Stay bubbly, and I will chat with you next time!
Two Point Campus
$39.99
