Two Point Campus Review
Swapping hospitals for university
Verdict
Two Point Campus is a fantastic simulation game that blends together management, quirky graphics and interesting characters to create a unique experience. With intuitive creation tools and a satisfying finance system, you’ve got everything you need to make your dream campus.
Pros
- Great variety of courses and personalities
- Hours of gameplay
- Great and distinctive art style
- Simple controls make designing easy
Cons
- Occasional technical glitches
Availability
- UKRRP: £34.99
- USARRP: $39.99
- Europeunavailable
- CanadaRRP: CA$53.49
- AustraliaRRP: AU$59.99
Key Features
- Platforms:PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch.
- Release date:9th August 2022
- Genre:Business simulation, social simulation, design and indie
Introduction
Two Point Campus is the sequel to Two Point Hospital, and comes in as another great management simulator with a lot of personality to boot. This game is colourful, interesting and I could play it for hours on end.
Two Point Campus improves on its predecessor and brings in more options for customisation than ever before. There are multiple courses to try out and various student personalities that can make every year challenging in its own way.
I have played around twenty-five hours of this game, which I believe is enough to give a fair score on the gameplay, graphics and overall how much I enjoyed it.
With all that in mind, here is how I got on with Two Point Campus.
Gameplay
- Management simulator
- Happier students mean more money
- Best played on PC
In Two Point Campus, you’re tasked with running a university, with the aims of making students happy, getting them good grades and making money.
This culminates in a management-type simulator, where I was responsible for building up my university from the ground up and then designing dormitories and classrooms to best fit the needs of my students. There are several different universities on offer, with each one being opened up after you have completed enough missions in the previous university.
I have played through Freshliegh, Piazza Lanatra, Mitton University, Noblestead and Spiffinmoore, with each bringing in new courses and new student personalities. Every uni also comes with features you need to work around; Mitton was too cold for most students, so I found I had to keep installing radiators, while I had to train the Janitors at Noblestead how to fight, as a few times a year we’d be overrun with invaders.
I really enjoyed how different each university felt, from the land you build on to the courses you’re introduced to, and I thought that the profession made at each uni allowed you to learn new skills and become more familiar with the game’s various mechanics.
There is also a Sandbox mode you can go into instead if you want to test out your skills without needing to worry about fees and deadlines. I tried out this mode in Creative mode, which meant I didn’t have to worry about finances and everything was already unlocked.
While I enjoyed this mode and it was fun to spend with reckless abandon, I preferred having the tasks and challenges that came with the normal campaign. I liked dipping into the Sandbox mode to be more experimental and see how interesting I could get my campus to look, but for a more structured experience, I would recommend the campaign.
Customisation
- Extremely easy to customise
- Can be as creative as you like
- Different items have different effects
A lot of Two Point Campus also focuses on the customisation aspect, as you need to ensure your uni is up to standards not only in terms of facilities but also attractiveness and cleanliness.
To start, I had to design each university to come with the appropriate classrooms, but I also needed to factor in multiple other spaces: bathrooms, shower rooms, lecture theatres, staff rooms, dormitories, student unions, student lounges, student libraries and more.
Juggling all of these spaces was interesting, and it was a great challenge learning which rooms are more vital at the start of the year and what you anticipate students will need in the long haul. Students will also have Personal Goals that they request, such as a party in the Student Union, so I found it important to have some spare money lying around to fund the event and potentially even build the room it needs to be hosted in.
Once you fulfil a student’s request you gain more money from XP points, and it also improves the happiness metre overall. During my first year at Mitton University, I struggled to balance the attractiveness and warmth of my rooms, meaning that some students dropped out or refused to pay their tuition fees. However, once I improved the space and started running events, I found that student satisfaction started to go up.
I also enjoyed the various items on offer in terms of customisation. Other than standard items you need in a classroom, such as a door or a desk, there are multiple items on offer to give spaces more personality. There are plant pots, cacti, interesting posters and vending machines that can be placed in many building areas, and trees and benches you can place outside.
My item collection only grew the longer I played, as I continued to unlock or buy items, which meant that each uni I went to felt different and had a distinctive esthetic, which kept it feeling fresh.
And since you are spending so much time adding in new decor and rooms, I was pleased to see how easy it was to create a new space or customise a room. I would recommend playing this on PC, as I can’t imagine a controller would give me the same dynamic movement or ability to quickly move around items.
One of my biggest issues with Animal Crossings: New Horizons is how slow and painful decorating can be, so I was pleased to see how seamless and simple it was here. I did have a few occasions where an error message claimed an item was being invalidly placed for seemingly no reason, meaning I couldn’t place more items in that room. However, this didn’t happen too often and I found that deleting and rebuying the item would usually solve it.
Despite how many menus you need to keep an eye on, I never felt overwhelmed or confused. The tutorial level at the start of the game shows you how you can manage your campus and the key skills you need, and I felt that there was a natural progression. The fact you can also pause time or speed it up was ideal, as I could pause to manage a crisis and speed up when everything was going smoothly.
Courses, Students and Staff
- Student personality types can differ
- Customisable staff
- Courses come in all shapes and sizes
One of the most interesting parts of Two Point Campus is the variety of Courses available. I started off with VR and Science, although as the game progressed more courses opened up. The Cooking and Knight courses were my personal favourites, as I found it entertaining to see a chef walking through the library or a Knight on their way to the shower.
You also need to make sure that your courses are upgraded, which can be done after building a Research room and getting staff members to research the topics. This opens up more items for specific rooms and helps better the grades of students.
During my time at Piazza Lanatra, I didn’t have the funds to build a Sweet Kitchen, which resulted in some angry students and low grades. It’s interesting to see how extra rooms and more facilities had an immediate effect, and it was really satisfying to see students suddenly getting A’s after I was able to upgrade each space.
Each Course also has its own specific aesthetic. Watch the kitchen classrooms for long enough and you see students creating massive burgers, while you can see the Knights jousting and battling each other on the campus fields. I loved to zoom out and watch my campus bustling with life, making the overall experience more engaging and as if I was watching people live out their actual lives.
Other than upgrading study areas, it was also important to take the personality of students into account. The Clown trait meant that certain students enjoyed playing pranks, and you can see them taking joking falls throughout the campus. This encouraged me to purchase the Clown Trunk for the Dorms, while seeing the Goth students meant I stocked up on the Gothic Bookcase, giving me more incentives to think about what I was buying.
But it’s not just the students you also need to keep an eye, as you also need to consider your staff. Building a Staff Room is the first step, but you need to make sure you have enough different staff whether that be Teachers, Assistants or Janitors. For example, you need an Assistant to run the Library or serve food and drink, Janitors to water plants and stave off intruders, and Teachers to be present in Lecture Theatres and classrooms.
I found that Staff Wages were the biggest outgoing expenditure, meaning you need to be careful who you hire and how much they cost. You can also train staff in the Training Room to develop more skills or learn new ones, allowing my Assistant Librarian to also have skills in Mechanics or Inspirational Talking, making them more valuable.
You can even customise the clothes your staff wear, which I found makes it easier to track who worked in what section. As with so many sections of this game, I loved how many options I had and how much freedom I was given to make the university my own, and it was satisfying to see my Staff and Students become happier and more fulfilled as I catered the campus to their needs.
Graphics and Audio
- Tannoy is funny and engaging
- Graphics are quirky
- Lots of personality in every design element
I really enjoyed the overall style of this game. It came off as wholesome and cheery, with a distinctive cartoony style. There is a lot of personality in the design of every student, and zooming in you can see small details, like litter on the floor or the stained shirt of a chef.
The classrooms usually see a lot of activity, with students interacting with each other and their environments. This made the game feel more dynamic and more interesting to watch, adding to the overall charm.
And while the music isn’t the most interesting part of the game, I liked how the background music changed depending on which university you were in, with the dark university of Mitton having more of creepy energy than the energetic music that played at Noblestead.
The campus tannoy is really funny too. With the adverts for fake meat and the announcer regularly reminding students that she’s not their mum, it made it feel more like a university environment but with a quirky edge that I really appreciated.
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Should you buy it?
You want a solid management simulator with a lot of personality:
Two Point Campus is a great simulation game and I think even people unfamiliar with the genre would love it. There is a lot of style and comedy, and the customisation is pretty much seamless. I can see almost anyone spending hours on this game.
You want a high-octane game:
While I really loved this game, it may not be for you if you’re after a more high-octane experience, such as Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes or F1 2022. While this is fantastic and I think it could be enjoyed by almost anyone, it is a calmer experience overall than what some may want.
Final Thoughts
I loved playing Two Point Campus. It was both easy and fun to create your perfect campus, while taking into your student’s and staffs needs into consideration, whether that be adding an extra staff room or putting up someone’s favourite poster.
The variation of courses was also a joy, as you can see each room bustling with life as you watch over the school year. The distinct aesthetics and styles of each classroom and even each student were impressive, and it was entertaining to see the different personalities interact with each other.
The only issue I had was the occasional invalid item appearing for no reason, and even that was only occasionally. The tone, graphics and audio were charming and engaging, and I can see myself spending hours on end improving my university. I would recommend this to pretty much anyone, as I believe everyone’s playthrough could look very different, and I believe that anyone could find something to love here.
How we test
We play every game we review through to the end, outside of certain exceptions where getting 100% completion, like Skyrim, is close to impossible to do. When we don’t fully finish a game before reviewing it we will always alert the reader.
Played on gaming laptop
Played over 20 hours of gameplay
Tested all game modes
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FAQs
Two Point Campus is a business simulation game in which you run a university. There are multiple universities to run that include different courses and types of students, with your goal being to make the students and staff happy, as well as make enough money to expand and take on new students.
The game launches on 9th August 2022 on both the Xbox One and the Xbox Series S/Series X. It will be available on Xbox Game Pass on day one of its release.
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Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
